Home -> Blog -> Thoughts on living freely
People do some pretty neat stuff to be able to live freely. This guy Sean sold his house (no more debts!) and started living out of a 60 sqft van while driving across the country coding and hiking (and I thought my room was small!). It’s a super cool article; if you don’t care about the construction details just skim through it looking at all the pictures and reading the text that’s about philosophy, not construction. Also many kudos to his Dad for helping him build out the van instead of convincing him to be “reasonable” and just do things that normal people do.
Over the course of the article Sean has a lot to say about freedom and the real value of things. A lot of it can be summed up by the two titles he offers the reader: “Fuck the Banks, I’ll Build My Own Damn House” and “How I Learned To Stop Worrying, and Build a Custom Camper Van”. While I don’t think a custom camper van is what I need in my life, I relate quite strongly to his attitude in this article. Serious evaluation of choices most people don’t consider, disregarding social norms, you’re only young once, doing “crazy” things just because you feel like it – it’s all there. I’m surprised he never mentioned the phrase “fight club”, given that the article is about how he ditched the corporate+condo life to live in a tiny van and be free. Certain parts of the article bring “Dune” to mind for me as well.
Mostly my reaction to this blog post is along the lines of “fuck yeah, that’s really cool” and “way to go for doing your own thing”, but there’s one part of Sean’s post that feels a little like a sad confirmation that freedom and loneliness go together. Sean writes “the biggest downside of living on the road is the loneliness. Nothing sucks more than your friends inviting you over for poker night, but you’re a thousand miles away, alone, in a parking lot.” The problem with living freely, doing things that no one else does just because you want to, is that no one else does these things so you often have to do them alone. I think the coolest thing about MIT (particularly east-side culture) is that so many people are willing to do things that just “aren’t done” that you can often explore new realms without being alone. Sean says that freedom is more important than loneliness, and I tend to agree, but having friends around you is still a really nice thing. Live freely and support each other, friends.
“The magic isn’t in the van. The magic is in the freedom. The van simply enables me to experience that freedom.”