As part of a coaching exercise, I’ve been trying to describe what I want my life to look like. The idea is that if I’m armed a better understanding of what I’m aiming for, I’ll be able to make more informed decisions that more intentionally lead me towards my goals for my life. So far, so simple. But in practice, I’ve found it impossibly difficult: a giant question that it feels impossible to even find the right scope and parameters for, let alone answer. What do I want my life to look like? How do I want to live?
If you stare at this question for long enough, you begin to feel like you’re being asked to define the meaning of life itself. Insane. You can’t. It’s the kind of question that is easy to be flippant about but otherwise feels impossible to approach. For now, I think we can say this: all of us create our own meaning and get to decide what’s important to us. In turn, that can inform the details and decisions of our day-to-day.
Living goals are a superset of work goals, which people often talk about. I’ve written many times that my professional goal is to work on projects that have the potential to help make the world more equal and informed. But why? How does that fit into my larger, human goals?
It’s hard to talk about what I think my life should look like without talking about the context — and the country — it sits in. That means talking about America, and the framing constraints it provides to everyone who lives in it.
And to be clear, for many people, America is constraining. The country is so steeped in an exploitative culture of work that there are is no statutory minimum number of vacation days and the national minimum wage is set below a level where anyone can reasonably live. The health insurance system is predatory, and your healthcare is typically connected to your employer, making it hard to change jobs or go out on your own. Unless you’re in a handful of cities, which themselves are expensive to live in, you need to own a car to get just about anywhere. Union membership is de minimus, leading to an imbalance towards corporations and the wealthy. Homeless people have very few avenues for help. The police all carry guns, and disproportionately use them on Black people. And on top of it all, the recent resurgence of rhetoric reminiscent of the 1930s, including stadiums of people carrying placards that read “mass deportations now,” is deeply troubling. I’ve started to wonder if Americans talk about freedom so much because most of them don’t have very much of it: to many people it’s the freedom to buy and say more or less what they want, but not the freedom to define the parameters of their lives or their work.
And at the same time, for the well-off and privileged, the experience of living in America can be freeing. The benefits at the slickest San Francisco tech companies I worked at were effectively equivalent to the minimum standards that every European gets by law, but there were far better parental leave policies for non-birthing parents and a culture of free food, drink, and other services in the office. My partner works for Google and their health insurance is almost as good as universal healthcare. There’s a sense of optimism and “you can do it”; there’s abundant capital and support for founders trying something new. If you’re in the in-crowd, there’s support.
I moved to the US from Edinburgh almost fourteen years ago. It as a no-brainer, but not because I wanted to live in America: my mother was terminally ill and I wanted to be close to her, and she’d moved to California a decade prior. The move completely blew up my life in ways that were sometimes very painful, but the core decision to be closer is not one I’ve ever regretted. While her life was thankfully extended by a double lung transplant that meant we got to have many more years with her, living with a transplant is hard: the remainder of her life was a medical rollercoaster that I’m glad I was there to help with.
But in the meantime, Brexit happened: Britain’s referendum to leave the European Union. I grew up in Britain but had lived there as part of the European Union. When its EU membership was revoked, I lost the legal right to live there. My relationship to the US transformed from it being a place that I was visiting temporarily to a place I was involuntarily stuck in.
There was a lot I appreciated about living in Europe. While a lot of ink has been spilled about universal healthcare, few talk about how freeing it is to not be afraid of seeing a doctor because you know you’ll never get a bill. There’s frequent, inexpensive, integrated transit everywhere. Cities and towns are built as mixed-use communities, which means you can easily walk to all your local services and stores. There are very few guns. Far fewer people own cars because they don’t need to. The quality of life of an average person — which is not just a subjective opinion but has been measured again and again — is higher. As a British resident, I was entitled to thirty-six vacation days a year (seven weeks!) as a legal minimum.
It feels like life in America is subject to layers of permission. You can go buy food — if you have a car. You can go to the doctor — if you have adequate health insurance. You can live a reasonable life — if you don’t fall through the cracks. You can go to college — if you’re willing to take on many tens of thousands of dollars in debt. Until very recently, you even needed to hire a third-party service (or firm) to file your taxes.
To be honest, I’ve often seen my life in America as being reactive rather than proactive: I moved here in reaction to a health emergency and remain here because of a referendum that was out of my control. I’ve often felt that I don’t have autonomy, and building community has often been harder than I would have liked because of the individualistic nature of American society and the chaos of my own life.
In Europe, life is more free-range. If you need to buy food, you can walk to the store and pick some up. You can just go to the doctor. Higher education is much more affordable and grade school education is of a much higher standard. More benefits lead to more freedom, because those things are simply taken care of: you don’t have to worry about paying for them at the point of use. Although the tax burden is a little higher, you also end up paying less out of pocket in total.
Europe is also much, much safer — particularly if you’re a child. (These days I’m understandably very focused on keeping my child safe.) Between 2009 and 2018, Western Europe had fewer than ten school shootings; the United States had 288, representing 86% of the world’s total of shootings. It’s not just about the terrifying prevalence of guns: children are also three times more likely to die on the road in the US.
At the same time, I’ve come to realize that Europe is more restrictive in other ways. It’s unquestionably more racist and less diverse, for example, in part because it refuses to actually examine its culpability in racism and, in particular, the slave trade. (Ask a European about racism and they’re quite likely to reply, “we don’t have those problems here.” Yes, you do.) A healthy community, and a healthy society, must be intentionally inclusive and equitable. You can’t get there by sticking your head in the sand.
There’s also a comparative lack of funding and support for people who are trying to build something new, even if the comparatively higher level of public benefits means that bootstrapping is easier. It’s also worth calling out that since I left, those benefits have been eroded, often by conservative politicians who want to wipe public benefits in favor of so-called private efficiency. It’s nothing less than theft, but it’s an emerging reality that diminishes Europe’s attractiveness.
Traversing these two worlds has directly informed how I think about what living well means. Sometimes I’ve been too cynical about the possibilities here in the US; if I’m honest with myself, I sometimes railed against the constraints when I lived in Europe. I think I need to open my mind, regardless of my location.
I recently visited a friend who lives in a community intentionally built as a platform for environmental and social change. I’d visited plenty of intentional communities back when I lived in San Francisco, and I’d always found them superficial: places that were more oriented around performing communal living than practicing the practical reality of it.
In stark contrast, my friend’s community blew my mind open: it was the kind of place I would never have allowed myself to imagine existing in the US.
I’m going to withhold detail to safeguard their privacy, but every aspect of it felt concretely-anchored to real, genuine progress towards change while centering the joy of being a human in community. The single phrase that came to mind was that the residents were free-range: they were free to spend time with each other on a whim, as needed, without need for appointment or permission. They could simply walk to get the everyday resources they needed, including to plug into their community and commune as people. This was true for the adults, but most notably and importantly for me, it was true for the children, too. It was common there for parents to not know where their children were — but they knew they were safe.
My conceptual frame for the kinds of lifestyles that are possible in America has been permanently widened — and consequently, I have more hope that I can live a good life here. Most importantly, it gave me the vocabulary I needed in order to describe the kind of life I want to have.
So now I can say this: I want my life — and the lives of my family — to be free-range, in open community, emotionally safe, and creatively unconstrained.
Free-range
A lifestyle where physical, emotional, and logistical constraints are minimized, allowing for organic interactions and movement. Or to put it another way, a life where you need to ask permission as little as possible: an independent, creative way of being where you’re not tethered to unnecessary constraints.
For example:
- You can walk or bike to essential services.
- Children can free play both at home and in the surrounding community without worry.
- You can spontaneously visit people, take trips, or go on adventures without the predominant need to extensively plan or make appointments.
- You have time and space to create and work on personal projects that aren’t scheduled and aren’t necessarily tethered to the need to make money.
- You have the safety to know that if you don’t have salaried work for a little while, you’ll still be protected, and you’ll still have healthcare.
Counter-examples of things that are emphatically not free-range:
- Scheduling my child so that their time outside of school is highly structured and they don’t have time or space to be creative on their own terms (or be bored, which I think is really important as a spark for creative thinking in its own right).
- Structuring and scheduling your own time so you don’t have optionality.
- Car-centric living.
- Gated communities and HOAs.
- An expectation that you should do what is popular or pre-ordained by the outside mainstream as “the right way to live”.
In open community
Living in an inclusive space where relationships are intentional, resources are shared, and collaboration is encouraged.
For example:
- Neighbors borrow tools, share meals, and trade skills to reduce waste and strengthen relationships.
- Open doors and welcoming spaces where it’s normal to drop by for a chat or lend a hand without the need for formality or pre-planning.
- A community that helps each other during collective challenges, from childcare to caregiving to problem-solving.
- There are adequate communal resources like parks, libraries, and community meeting spaces. (Even pubs, in the traditional English sense, where they’re a sort of communal living room.)
- There’s a sense that no matter how adverse the outside world is, you have allies who also see it for what it is and are here for you no matter what.
- You have the space and time to care for people — parents, children, other people in your community who need it.
Counter-examples:
- Isolated living, where neighbors barely know one another or engage in meaningful connection.
- “Rugged individualism,” where everyone is expected to fend for themselves as a virtue.
- A culture of competition rather than collaboration.
- Who children can play with is closely guarded. Sleepovers are not allowed.
- You don’t have the time and space to be a caregiver because you need to be at work all the time.
Emotionally safe
Living in an inclusive environment where vulnerability is met with care and understanding, and where people feel supported to be their authentic selves. Emotional intimacy and intellectual openness are highly valued.
For example:
- People are comfortable expressing their emotions, thoughts, and opinions without fear of judgment or ridicule. This is particularly important within partnerships and families, but it’s important across communities.
- A culture that embraces diversity, respects boundaries, and fosters a sense of belonging for everyone, regardless of background or identity. People feel comfortable and safe to be themselves.
- Disagreements are addressed constructively, with empathy and a focus on understanding rather than blame.
- The community is supportive of trying new things and of failure, and help pick you up and dust you off to try again.
- Physical safety: there’s no threat of violence.
Counter-examples:
- Demanding perfection and punishing failure.
- A culture where people feel they must suppress their feelings to “keep the peace.”
- A culture with an in-crowd and an out-crowd: for example, an environment where one religion is accepted and others are frowned upon, or where the “traditional” family is venerated. Xenophobia, racism, homophobia, and transphobia all fall into this category.
- A world where being different to an accepted mainstream is frowned upon, with aggressions that range from micro to macro. People might sneer about preferred pronouns, for example, or make “I identify as …” jokes. Or they might blacklist you.
Creatively unconstrained
Having the time, resources, and mental space to pursue creative interests and projects without undue outside pressure. At work, having the autonomy to make decisions and follow your expertise, instincts, and values with minimal interference.
For example:
- Days with enough unstructured time to dream, experiment, or follow your curiosity without interruption — and both the implicit permission to do so and the common understanding that it’s not a waste of time.
- Friends, family, and communities that celebrate creativity for its own sake, regardless of output or success.
- The respect and autonomy to create a strategy and execute on it at work.
- The ability to center your values and perspective in your work.
- Prioritizing wellness and balance so your mental energy isn’t consumed by stress or logistical chaos.
- Engaging in hobbies or projects without worrying about monetizing them. For example, painting for relaxation, writing purely for self-expression, or tinkering for joy.
- Dedicated physical space to work on your projects, either alone or in collaboration with others.
Counter-examples:
- A lifestyle so busy with work or obligations that there’s no mental or physical bandwidth for creativity.
- Feeling like every creative effort must result in a product or service that generates income, or where they are dismissed as unproductive unless they have a tangible outcome.
- Avoiding creative work due to self-criticism or the societal pressure to succeed.
- Being micro-managed or edited, at work or in life.
- Being forced to work on things that are in opposition to your values.
Okay, but why these pillars in particular?
Really it’s a framing device: each one speaks to a need for time, space, relationships of care and trust, and self-direction. They pick and choose the best bits of living in my various contexts — living in Europe and America, being a startup founder, a parent, a carer — and tie them together into principles for a life that feels nurturing.
- Free-range ties to autonomy and the joy of unstructured living.
- In open community reflects a human need for connection and mutual support, without restrictions based on identity.
- Emotionally safe speaks to belonging and trust.
- Creatively unconstrained emphasizes self-expression and personal growth.
The theme of inclusivity sits across many of these. It’s important to me because of my need for community and for emotional safety: I want my friends and families to be included, regardless of their backgrounds and identities, and I want to feel safe myself, as a person with a complicated personal context and a non-standard identity.
It’s also worth calling out what’s not here: wealth, or power, or influence. Those aren’t important to me unless they’re a way to get to these pillars.
My values are simply that everyone should be able to live this sort of life, regardless of who they are or where in the world they live. Everyone deserves autonomy, connection, support, safety, and the freedom to be themselves and express themselves openly. It’s not just that I want this for me, although clearly I do: I want to work towards this being an open, shared set of living principles that are available to all.
I’ve thought a lot about helping the world get there — remember, I want to work on projects with the potential to make the world more informed and equal. But the path to helping me get there is a little different. It involves carefully choosing the projects I work on, the team cultures I take part in, how I make money, how I present myself to the world, and the people and communities I associate with.
This framework will evolve with time and feedback, shaped by new experiences and perspectives. But for now, it offers a compass — one that points toward a life that feels authentic, nurturing, and achievable.
Let’s go.
Share this post
