What does a "comfortable life" really cost us?

Photo @mantashesthaven

Over the summer, I sold the family home and a roomful of belongings, and then packed up the rest and moved across the country from Montreal to Calgary.

The decision was made over the course of about 3 months. Are we doing this? Yeah, we're doing this.

For people on the fringes of my life, coworkers and acquaintances on the outside looking in... it appeared to be a spur of the moment decision that came out of the blue. Some called it bold. Some used the word rash. Why move? I already had a good job, a comfortable home, a car, a savings account... how could I possibly want to leave any of that behind?

For my closest friends and family, the decision was met with a hurrah. They had heard the years of complaints and knew how much I hated living in Montreal. Knew how disconnected I felt from the place I lived. Like a tourist, staying in someone else's house.

And it's not that anything is wrong with Montreal. I'm sure that many Canadians would argue that Montreal is the superior city in terms of scenery, culture, food, etc. But to me, it was always foreign. Even after 20 years. Dirty, crowded, rude, dilapitated. It's infrastructure rotting like a tooth. Roads that are embarrassingly hard to drive on. I once described it to a group of people equally as dislocated as I was as Canada’s anus, and they all agreed. We decided that if Canada was a woman's body, Montreal would be the anus, Ottawa would be the vag that all the politicians repeatedly rape, and Calgary and Edmonton, with their Rocky Mountain views would be our nations glorious breasts. You can fill in the rest with whatever comparisons suit your experience of this expansive land. BC might be the head, full of spirituality, or at least it might seem that way if you smoke enough bud to feel like you've opened your third eye.

A lot of people will disagree. And that's okay. It doesn’t matter. Some people would be embarrassed to live in "cow town." It's a perfectly valid opinion, but it has nothing to do with me. You'll hear both sides of the coin no matter what you choose for yourself in life, which is why you always have to choose for yourself and not for anyone else.

For me, the move was do or die. I was tired of watching myself wither. Tired of watching my kids sit on the outside looking in, of feeling like strangers at home. Tired of watching the struggle.

Living in a place you hate takes its toll. And it's not the city's fault. Sometimes you just have the overwhelming feeling that a place is simply wrong for you. Like there's something in the air that your lungs weren't designed to breathe. Even the trees in the distance can look unwelcoming. You're not suppose to be there, and some part of you knows it. This could apply just as much to a neighbourhood, a house, a job, or even a marriage. It's not for you, and you need to get out if you want to truly live. You need to make a change. Sometimes a big change. A drastic change. One that others might call rash.

It wasn't rash to decide to leave a place after having regularly thought about leaving it  for nearly 20 years. It only seemed that way on the outside.

The things we choose to tolerate shape our lives in invisible ways, and no choice is quite as invisible for a lot of people as where you choose to live. Sometimes we are born in a place we never leave. Sometimes a husband or a wife brings us to their place and we go along to get along. Sometimes is a choice that we don't even make consciously, we just let the setting of our story slide in to the background and imagine ourselves immune to its subtle but forceful influence.

But where you live makes up a big part of your identity, whether you want it to or not. It dictates what kinds of things you can do on the weekends, where you can go, what kind of people you get to interact with on a regular basis, what you have access to, how  long it takes you to get to work, how you feel about the commute, and so on and so on. Apart from the way you interact with the physical features of the city itself, there is a spiritual consequence of feeling disengaged with where you live. Whether you feel connected and like you belong, can profoundly impact your overall well-being. Your mental health, your physical health, the choices you make—the life that is possible for you to live there. So, the decision to uproot our lives from Montreal to Calgary wasn't just about changing geographical locations; it was about reclaiming a sense of self, about finding a place where we could all thrive without apology or limit.

Most people don’t like it, but change is the constant force that shapes the course of our lives. It's not often a choice but a necessity, a crucial element in the evolution of our personal narratives. What doesn't grow, rots. And the stagnancy is catching. Sometimes a change is the only way forward. It took me two decades of compromising to realize that staying in a place that didn't align with my true self was more damaging than the uncertainty of the unknown in a place that did.

The familiar, while comforting, can become a comfort zone that restricts our ability to explore new possibilities. That costs you more than it gives you. We're taught to believe that there are certain things we need to put on our to-do lists in order to consider ourselves successful, responsible adults. The things that everyone tells you to acquire—the marriage, the job, the house, the kids, the RRSPs, etc. So conventional they're completely banal. Life becomes prescriptive. No thought to the where, the why, or the spark that's supposed to light your way. I was talking to a coworker about this, and it struck us both how so incredibly common it is for people to build this prison of their own making and then sit behind the doors of their cage pouting about how they wish it could be some other way without realizing that the key to their cell is in their pocket.

If something isn't working for you, change it.

It's as simple and as complicated as that. Sometimes it feels impossible, but I assure you it's not. You can change your whole life if you just decide to.

If you find yourself at the crossroads of change, remember that it might not be just a whim, but more like something calling you from within. Listen to that voice.

For me, there's nothing but uncertainty ahead. But then, that's where the magic happens isn't it?