Europe will change you
Where you live shapes the person you become, choose wisely
Six years ago I quit my corporate job, packed two suitcases, and bought a one-way ticket to Europe. I’ve heard people say “Wherever you go, there you are” — that’s BS.
Where you live has more impact on your day-to-day than anything else.
It determines nearly everything in your life — your work, how you get to work, how you spend your days off, who your friends are, who your neighbors are, how many kids you have, even how often you get sick.
A few months back, an article from Elizabeth.Ink was making it’s rounds. The title, “Europe Won’t Fix You” caught my attention. First I was amused, and then horrified.
writes — “life at its core is the same no matter where you decide to live it."What a silly statement. It’s like saying “marriage at its core is the same no matter who you marry” or “work at its core is the same no matter what your job is”.
I’ve lived in three countries, I know life is not the same no matter where you live it.
She tells the story of an American friend in Italy — “Just one more of the untold alcoholics, lost souls, and troubled ex-pats I’ve met during my decades abroad, most of them running from something, rarely to anything.”
I’m curious to know where Elizabeth meets all these “troubled ex-pats”. Her explanation is far from the archetype I see living in Barcelona. The friends I’ve met in my six years abroad are ambitious people building businesses and working on interesting projects. They’re focused on self-development, living a healthy lifestyle, and establishing strong social connections.
They know that where you live is a direct reflection of your values and lifestyle. It’s why people gravitate toward certain places. I’ve written about how our surroundings shape our behaviors and influence our emotions:
Where you choose to live can change who you are, how you behave, and how you feel mentally, emotionally, and physically. You’re being shaped by your surroundings every single moment. Nice places make us feel good, ugly places make us feel sad. And I think that in the same way we can fall in love with people, we can also fall in love with specific places for specific reasons.
Reading Elizabeth’s article, I was disappointed by how she discourages people from moving abroad. I know how important “place” is, so I left a comment. She replied, comparing the experience of shopping — “be it at Costco or a farm stand”:
Idk, maybe shopping is just shopping for some people? In my humble opinion, shopping at a Costco warehouse versus my local fruteria downstairs feels different.
Getting to work by car, bus, bike, or foot also feels different. If the place you live requires you to drive a car for EVERY SINGLE THING, your chances of serendipity decrease and you feel less connected to the people around you.
Life at its core is not the same no matter where you live
I grew up in Wellington, Florida. It’s the typical sprawling suburb seen in much of the US. Lots of room for cars and a bunch of Non-places:
This is where I lived the majority of my life. I had no perception of what it’s like to live in a walkable place where you don’t need a car. I’d visit my grandma in NYC in the summers, so I knew these places existed, but there’s a big difference between visiting a walkable place and actually living there.
You think you know what it would be like, but until you spend an extended amount of time there, it’s difficult to fathom the day-to-day experience. Now that I live in a walkable place where I don’t need a car, my worldview has been flipped upside down.
Living in Spain has changed my life in many ways, but cycling is the most profound. Before moving to Barcelona, I hadn’t owned a bike since high school. I thought bikes were for kids. I was wrong. Bikes are for people of all ages:
I doubt that my re-introduction to cycling would’ve happened if I continued living my life in Florida. Now I use my bike for everything, both function and pleasure. Cycling has brought me so much joy over the past few years and hopefully many decades to come, and it’s all because of where I live.
If you spend your entire existence in one location, you’ll reduce your exposure to alternate ways of living. By moving to a new country, you’ll inhabit different philosophies and it might even unlock lifestyle qualities you didn’t know you desired.
I still think it’s crazy how one visit to Spain changed my life trajectory:
Looking back, it’s no surprise I fell in love with this city. After my first visit in 2015, I could tell there was something special about this place. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I felt an immediate pull to live here.
I’m now a self-proclaimed urbanist who obsesses over how places shape us. I want to develop a deeper understanding what makes some places more attractive than others.
Another example of how places shape our lives is
from . He wrote about his time living in Mesa Verde and how it inspired him to become an archaeologist:“Our tour of Mesa Verde catapulted me into wanting to become an archaeologist. I wanted to grasp what it meant to live in a place like this and all the other thousands of sites across that open landscape.”
Places can change you. The same you will live a completely different life depending on whether you’re in Oklahoma or Tokyo or New Delhi or London. Not only will your day-to-day vary wildly depending on which of these places you call home, but it might also impact the work you dedicate your life to. Sure you’ll still have to work and shop for groceries, but the beauty is in the details.
As it turns out, our physical surroundings play a massive role in our psychological well-being. Christopher Alexander, best known for his 1977 book A Pattern Language talks about the nature of human-centered design and how important it is:
There is a myth, sometimes widespread, that a person need do only inner work in order to be alive like this; that a man is entirely responsible for his own problems; and that to cure himself, he need only change himself. But it is a one-sided and mistaken view which also maintains the arrogance of the belief that the individual is self-sufficient, and not dependent in any essential way on his surroundings.
The fact is, a person is so far formed by his surroundings, that his state of harmony depends entirely on his harmony with his surroundings. Some kinds of physical and social circumstances help a person come to life. Others make it very difficult.
Not only can places change our life path, they do in fact have the power to fix us.
My friend
from wrote about this in his piece Europe could fix you, actually:One simply doesn’t need much money to live an extraordinarily beautiful life in Spain, one that feels rich in all the ways that truly matter.
And THIS is where I diverge from Elizabeth: moving to Europe actually could fix you because where you live has an enormous impact on your physical, emotional, and social health. Europe just has a high concentration of places with the right conditions. Spain famously has one of the longest lifespans in the world, which most attribute to strong social connections as people age.
My elders in the U.S. spend much of their time alone or otherwise connected through screens. Elders in Spain are to be found at all hours of day and night sharing a beer or a coffee with friends outside, on a patio, and parents as well, sometimes with the children playing in the plazas nearby.
I know there’s no such thing as a perfect utopian society. Every place comes with its problems and trade-offs. It’s just that some places have bigger problems than others.
The United States does not feel like a safe place to be right now. A prominent CEO was murdered in public and people are laughing about it. Kids are shot dead in schools regularly and all the elected officials do is offer their thoughts and prayers.
From the outside looking in, it’s a violent country that places the individual rights of some over the collective well-being of others. As
has noted, the way we live in the United States is not normal.So yes, maybe moving somewhere else can actually fix you…
Treat it as an experiment, not a permanent decision
Moving to a foreign country is a two-way door, you can go for a year and then come back if it’s not a good fit. Even if your move is temporary, when you go back home, you’ll come back with a fresh pair of eyes. You’ll have new insights and you’ll feel a deeper sense of appreciation for the things you missed.
Prepare yourself mentally and know that it won’t be all rainbows and butterflies. Don’t just do it on a whim. Make a plan and have a safety net because there will be challenges when relocating. The language barrier itself is enough to make people give up. I like the way
phrased it in a recent post:Nobody says to themselves, “I want to feel overwhelmed!” It’s just that in life, sometimes taking the next step is not a step, it’s a leap. Moving to a new country or into a new home, getting a new job or changing career path, learning to speak a new language, or starting a family – it’s not like you can just learn 1 or 2 new things until you’re up to speed. Part of what you’re signing up for, consciously or not, is a period of discomfort.
That discomfort is a good thing though, it’s not something you should try to avoid.
says — “Trust me when I say you haven’t suffered until you’ve dealt with the French or Italian bureaucracy as an immigrant unsure of language and customs.”When I hear the word suffer, it conjures up images of people being tortured.
If dealing with bureaucracy in a foreign language brings that much “suffering”, then I’m sorry, but you’re soft. Growth comes from putting yourself in challenging situations and overcoming them. That’s how you build confidence and resilience.
So if you’ve ever daydreamed of moving to Europe or anywhere else in the world, go for it. It could fix you, actually. And at the very least, it will change you.
Until next time my friends,
<3 B
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from has launched a series On Leaving America where she interviews expats living in France. from has a good list of questions to ask if seriously considering a move. Travel writer Tim Leffel has a great book on the topic: A Better Life For Half the Price
Kept nodding all the way through this! And I had a similar reaction to Elizabeth’s post. For some (I’d wager even MANY), the day to day measurably changes when you leave wherever home was. I feel like you: Costco and the local farmstead or Marché are absolutely nothing alike, especially in the sensation they procure.
Completely agree with this. When we are in our home countries we play a “role” a script that at times was just handed to us or we chose. When you live in another country for a while, the script and your role changes completely. This then allows you to become another layer of you, experience another aspect of you that was buried in the home country. We hold multitudes and one tangible way to meet a new layer is to be in a total new setting.