Great post Solveig, particularly because in just the last couple days I've confronted my own relationship to this idea of the conventional life. The word "reject" has floated through my braincells so fully in the last few days that its very meaning has somehow flipped 180 degrees. In identifying all the silly strands of society, all the meaningless rules and layers of complexity, I've seen a picture of the world as I want it. In rejecting this complexity I've accepted a world of my own creation. And why not? The biggest myth propagated by civilization is that we can't create our own.

And I'm going to create my own, a fact which I haven't told my parents yet and one which they won't understand. I talked to my mom the other day on the phone about her 60 hour work weeks and the 11 years before retirement. She said in a tone that wasn't resigned or even disappointed sounding that all she does is work now. I wonder what her life will look like in 11 years when she reaches that point of retirement. Will it look something like the end of the world on a two dimensional planet? I'm worried she is going to get there and not remember what the world looked like to her when she was my age.

My parent's generation played the game. They went to school, got higher degrees, got married, had kids and worked and worked and worked. And I'm thankful for that because it put me here in this mind and body. But I don't want that. It's too linear. I don't want to know what I'm going to be doing in a year from now, I don't want a single day 11 years down the line to be the primary goal in my life.

I reject money. I reject that I need it and that it dictates lifepaths. I accept the world without money. A world without limitations. A world made only for experiences and the lessons they imbue. Everyone dies. Our bodies will all decay in some fashion or another and the world will forget us. There are around 7 billion other lives on this planet and I don't want any of them. I want this second to imbue the next with meaning and I want tomorrow to be different than today. I'm not afraid of a life in poverty, I'm not afraid of a life in motion, a life without comfort. I'm afraid of a life I didn't ask for.

"For whoever allow themselves much of that indulgence, incur the risk of something worse than disparaging speeches-they are in peril of a commission de lunatico, and of having their property taken form them and given to their relations."

The only property which any of us actually own is a single life.

Mill's last line, which Morgan picks up, is really rather chilling. A Streetcar Named Desire, anyone?

Society has a small tolerance for deviance and a much larger anxiety about it. And yes -- people who do things differently do it at the cost of their life. So presumably one must get to the state of feeling that it's worth the risk.

The Amish, as I understand it, have a famous coming-of-age rite wherein teenagers are allowed to live in the "real world" for a bit before deciding whether or not to commit to Amish life.  As long as they remain outside they have very limited contact with their families, but if they decide to come back, they must accept all the community's rules.

Morgan, I wonder about this reading your plea for a different kind of life. What is most difficult, I suspect, is not the overt hostility but the subtle lack of support. For instance, a man who is not interested in making money or a woman who is not interested in having children will have a much more difficult time finding people to remind him or her that the basic life choices s/he has made are worthwhile. You must not simply create a new world, but create a whole world and become self-sufficient in a deep way.

It's good advice Emily. And I'll see what I can do with it. It just seems infinitely funny how complicated we've made our lives. I mean I'm fairly certain I came out of my mother with a fairly empty schedule. When did it become so filled? And with such nonsensical things. If God does exist I'm pretty sure civilization wasn't His intended goal. Can't we all just go swimming in a mountain spring all day and then dry off with a bottle of wine and a bonfire before falling asleep under the stars? You're right Emily, if I say that is my life goal, to fall asleep under the stars every night, people will scoff. So I'll tell them something else, that I want to eventually own a business that sells affordable kitchenware, or whatever else they want to hear. To my parents I'll say I want their life, I want to find a wife, settle, settle some more, settle some more, achieve comfort, then become eternally comfortable roughly six feet below the ground. Will there be any space left by the time I get there? When did the word settle take on such mundane meaning anyways? The pioneers settled, explorers settled the wilderness, and now the Jones from down the street are settling their middle age.

I've actually heard about that Amish practice to send their kids out of the community and give them a choice. So much respect for that. Although theirs isn't the life for me either, when I heard about this practice it completely registered with me what the Amish are all about. And it must be hard, to live in a community that is so the other. And the idea of doing something like that by myself seems extraordinarily scary. And I don't want to be the other. But I don't want the life I've been handed either.

This is all well and good. But it doesn't change the fact that I'm wrapped up in the system right now and I will be for at least another 2 years. As I see it I owe it to my parents to live their life, or at least the life they want for me, until I graduate college. They've got me this far and have pledged the next 11 years of working life for it. I owe them the thanks. But after I graduate I'm going to be forced to reassess my position on this matter and somehow turn it from the ideal into the practical.

As you say Emily it will come down to weighing the risk vs the reward. And if the scale comes back as I think it should at this moment, the first step will be informing my parents.