a Borderless Life

“What are you running away from?” Is a question I hear quite often.

After having spent many years abroad, I am again packing my bags, selling my belongings and stepping aboard a plane towards a new destination. It’s time for me to explain what I am running towards.

Four years ago I started on a endeavour together with my wife. We’d just graduated, got married and decided to go travelling for our honeymoon. The only thing is, we didn’t come back for another three years. We traveled to 60 countries in 4 different continents and lived a professional life on the other side of the planet. Little over a year ago, we returned to the place we grew up, but are planning our next endeavour already. The only thing is that our next step isn’t going to be a destination or has a specific timeframe, it’s rather a lifestyle we are going to pursue. A lifestyle we call “A Borderless Life”.

Before going into-depth about the concept of a borderless life, I want to tell you a bit more about my background. As an Afghan refugee growing up in the Netherlands, I couldn’t wish for a better place to grow up. It gave me the fruits of life, like security, wealth, prosperity and health through which I am now in a position to choose a merrier life many others on earth can’t. But growing up in a small village as the only immigrant, coming from a country many people back then never had heard about, created a certain perception.

I never really felt belonging to anything or anyone. I was neither Dutch, neither Afghan. I was neither black, neither white. I could never place myself in a specific box and always felt different. So different, I actually started acting differently. For instance, being the only Ajax (football) fan in the hometown of PSV. When everyone went for Coke, I went for diet Coke (while skinny as f•ck). Anyway, when everyone went for option A, I automatically started questioning B. As I never felt belonging to anything or anyone, I felt the obligation to questioning things and choose critically. So similarly, I started questioning life choices as well on a very young age. Why does everyone automatically accept this chronological life path where everything seems to be laid out from birth. Like when you will study, work, get married, buy a house, get kids and retire. It almost felt like a relief being able to choose where you’d work and whom you’d marry. Even more terrifying for me was how grown-ups seemed to spend only a couple weeks a year to things they really liked doing. So from a young age I started thinking what would option B be here?

In contrast to my avoiding typical-life-choices, I met and married my wife on a very typical age. She had a pretty similar background, making less-typically life choices together easier. So after finishing our studies and wedding, we decided to postpone the whole buy-a-house-and-work-phase and rather live from our backpacks for a while. After our wedding, we crashed some weeks at our parents’ place, sold all our belongings that didn’t fit in our backpacks and boarded a plane without a return ticket. Not knowing this journey we were about to embark would shape my earlier thoughts about a possible option B into a whole new level.

As true explorers we were always looking for the most off-the-beaten-path experiences. You know, the “meeting locals” and “skipping the tourist trail” stuff. To increase this likelihood, we visited lesser known regions and countries. But little did we know that finding these disconnected and out-of-this-world experiences could be such a challenge. Everything felt so known and developed and similar to what we were used to in the West. I remember being in the Caucasian Mountains in Georgia in a small local eatery listening to background music I usually listened on Spotify. My wife and I couldn’t find a Bollywood club in the hometown of Bollywood, Mumbai, because they only played EDM at clubs. Metropolitan cities around the world started to look like copy-cats, all offering the same cafes, eateries and shops everywhere. Due to globalisation everything around the world was starting to move towards each other and the same standards. Other than discussing if this is a good or a bad thing from a cultural diversity point of view, I saw a new opportunity. If these standards are (roughly) the same around the world, why are we restricting ourselves to one place?

Another thing that might sound unsurprising, but can feel astonishing when experiencing it, is how easy travelling has gotten in this digital era. If you didn’t know it already, the internet and all its apps and hardware have reached all the corners of the world. We could use the same apps all around the world to find a roof over our head (AirBnB), to get from A to B via public transport (Google Maps), find a restaurant (Tripadvisor), get a cab (Uber), build a local professional network (Meetup), find a workspace (WeWork) and find any answer in the world (Quora). Funnily enough, when my wife and I tried to settle down on the other side of the planet, we built a whole new life with finding work, a house and connections in just a couple of months. Of course there are tons of other things that usually don’t go as planned, but you get my point, it never has been easier for mankind in history to travel or settle in other places on earth.

These experiences basically set a new foundation for our life choices. We thought: “Why restrict yourself to one place on earth?” “What holds you back to a place or a group of people if you can have a similar life somewhere else, maybe even better?” As immigrants growing up in a multi-cultural world, we’ve never really felt rooted to one place or culture anyway. Sure, we always identify ourselves as Dutch-Afghan, but what the hell does that mean anyway? The only thing that we felt rooted towards was our family and each other, but for the rest nothing really. Being aware of this created relief and stress at the same time. Because suddenly our playing ground was much bigger. It was no longer the town we grew up or the country we were born in, it was the planet we were living on.

Fast forward to where we are today, and where this has led us to. After returning to the place we grew up, we felt lost. We knew we weren’t home and couldn’t commit for longer-term plans, but had difficulty expressing and explaining this to others. Some told us to “Grow up” while others told us “You’ve lived your lives, now accept normal life”. But we knew we weren’t mad. Our experiences and inspirations during travelling were real and we met so many others that agreed. There had to be an “option B”. While we still do not have all the answers yet, we think we are at a phase we can safely translate our thoughts and feelings into words. And we like to call our option B: A borderless life.    

A borderless life is basically a life without constraints of time and location. One in which you are not bounded to a geographical location on earth or to a specific culture or group. You are not bounded to modern-day or older times expectations. You are not bounded to seasons or vacations. You are only bounded to biological and emotional restrictions that emerge while walking a specific life-path, a path very close to your true intrinsic motivations in life.

To be clear, no, this doesn’t mean we are going to live as hobos on a beach in Goa, listen reggae and use narcotics all day while complaining about politics. On the contrary, we’re going to have a very similar life to most of you reading this. Only with a couple of key things different. You could describe it as world citizenship in its purest form. Living a borderless life, traveling from a to b, using the latest perks of technology to make the swift easier. Some might describe it a ‘jet-setter life’, we rather call it a ‘globetrotter life’, because it’s no longer restricted to the affluent ones. But this life isn’t for all and has its pitfalls many probably can’t handle.

For starters, you have to let go of materialistic desires. Our goal is to fit everything we own into a backpack or large suitcase. Logically, owning a lot of stuff will prohibit your flexibility in moving around. We aren’t owning a house or a car, but leasing it when possible and try to use communal facilities like public transport. We even lease our bicycles. Because why own something if you can share it and remain flexible as well? Similarly we only lease small apartments as we don’t need a lot of space and only buy the minimal furniture. This doesn’t mean we will never own property, but will do this only if it supports our borderless life. We’ve sublet a bedroom in our apartment via AirBnB, helping other travellers and ourselves in affording a borderless life. This asks for a different mindset in owning stuff, like sell or donate stuff you no longer need or not buy it in the first place and share when possible. During our long periods of time living from our backpacks, we realised how little we actually needed. And honestly, it feels so relieving when you let go of stuff you no longer need and the minimalistic interior looks pretty good as well.

Furthermore, you have to accept you’ll loose strong connections with people. When moving around you can’t possibly continue investing in connections with people you care about. We’ve found that real connections are made when you’re together unplanned for longer periods of time. When living a borderless life, you have to plan everything. Sure you’ll still catch up on the phone or meet when you are temporarily somewhere. But that’s really different compared to when being situated somewhere for a longer period of time. Of course you’ll also meet a lot of new people and create new friendships. But in our experiences these will (almost) never become as strong, as you just don’t have enough time to spend quality time together! For us this is especially difficult with family and honestly the main thing that is holding us back. Missing important moments like birthdays or worse not being there for loved ones during difficult times really takes its toll on you. As we haven’t found the right solution for this, we are constantly looking for ways to deal with it. Meaning letting them fly over to wherever we are at that moment. But still, it will never be as good as being situated very close to them and you have to accept your losses on this matter.

Also, your life will logically become a lot less stable. We’ve actually lost our feeling of home which is very weird. Also we can’t plan ahead for longer periods of time, because we are constantly in dubio what will come after. This impacts almost every decision you make tremendously. You are living on months instead of years, meaning you have to let go of long-term plans which need many years of stability.

But the most important thing is to let you know that living a borderless life doesn’t automatically mean a better life. To give you an example. I grew up in a small rural village where everyone used to know each other. Back then, going to the nearby rural city Eindhoven (15 minutes drive) felt like a different world. Going to the capital city Amsterdam (1,5 hours drive) was something you’d talk about the next day. Spending your holidays in another country like Spain (2 hours flight) was only possible once a year for which you had stories about for weeks. For me now, distances have another meaning. Spending a day in London or Paris is like the day-trip capital escape and flying to Asia or the US is something I’d like to do more often a year. As you can see my world has shifted. But is having a bigger world relatable to having a happier world? Sometimes I come across my old classmates and see them still hanging out with each other, visit the local pub and have fun visiting local festivities together. You could doubt who is missing out on what? I think neither of us is having a better life, but we both have the lives closer to our intrinsic motivations for life. Meaning, a borderless live is definitely not for everyone!

Now you know why we choose a borderless life, the foundation of it and its implications. But you still have no idea what our plans are. Are we going to live a digital nomad life? Or are we going to backpack around for another 3 years? Or are we going to settle down in another country?

I’ll tell you in my next story. But living a borderless life means living flexible to whatever option you have at that specific moment and make the most out of it. I always tend to have plan A’s, B’s and C’s, so with a bit of luck one of them will work out. As I am developing these new ideas and mindsets, I surely do not have all the answers ready yet. And will continue to share new learnings and discoveries along the road. But for now, one thing I am sure of is that my life will be BORDERLESS.