Love and Unconventional Living: The Ultimate Parallel

I visited my parents in Phoenix before meeting my husband in El Cuyo, Mexico to start our 2nd for-real-this-time liveaboard boat search.

The morning of my flight, with my possessions reduced to what would fit in the cabin of a 40-foot sailboat, my rebellious Korean mom asked if I was running away from something.

I wasn't. I was running toward everything. Though I'll admit, the sight of my carefully curated life stuffed into one suitcase filled with water-resistant bags made me look less like an enlightened minimalist and more like someone who had recently discovered their spouse's secret family in Toronto.

Living differently isn't an endpoint but a process, much like love. We often mistake both for destinations: find the right person, buy the right boat, move to the right place, and you'll arrive at some perpetual state of fulfillment. But that's not how either works. To borrow from D.H. Lawrence, "We have pushed a process into a goal." The truth is messier, more dynamic, and far more interesting.

When you choose to live unconventionally, whether that means making your home on the water, building a life in a distant country, or simply refusing to follow the prescribed path, you're committing to a continuous process of becoming.

It demands everything you have and then asks for more, like an especially demanding breathwork instructor who keeps insisting your breathing could be more… authentic.

This process, like love, requires "the breadth of the aperture through which you let in the reality" of your chosen life.

It asks you to pay attention to the subtle shifts: the way your priorities realign themselves when you've shed the unnecessary, how your relationship with time transforms when you're no longer bound by conventional schedules, the unexpected ways you find community when you've left the familiar behind.

The challenge lies beyond making the initial leap. Some days, you'll question everything.

The simplicity you sought feels like deprivation.

The freedom you craved feels like rootlessness.

The adventure you desired feels like foolishness.

These moments aren't failures; they're part of the process.

Lawrence writes of being "happily alone in all the wonders of communion, swept up on the winds, but never swept away from one's very self." This is the paradox at the heart of choosing an unconventional life: maintaining your center while remaining open to transformation.

You learn to be both the seabird and the air that holds it aloft.

Society tells us stability comes from standing still, from building walls and setting roots. But another kind of stability exists in motion, in the constant small adjustments that keep you true to your course.

It's the stability of a boat at sea, not fighting the waves but moving with them, using their energy to press forward.

Living with courage means listening to your own inner compass, even when it points away from the familiar harbor.

The goal becomes the continuous process of alignment with your truest self, a phrase I would have mercilessly mocked in my previous life, probably while stress-eating takeout at my desk at 11 PM.

Like love, living differently "is not a phenomenon that happens unto you but a creative act." Each day requires new choices, new adjustments, new ways of seeing and being.

Some days you'll nail it, moving in perfect harmony with your chosen path. Other days you'll feel like you're fighting the current, questioning every decision that led you here.

Those questioning days matter as much as the harmonious ones. They force you to examine your choices, refine your understanding, and either recommit to your path or adjust your course. You learn to sail with doubt, letting it be part of the journey rather than an obstacle.

When people ask why I chose this life, they're looking for an inspirational answer, preferably something they can post on Instagram with a sunset background.

But the truth runs so much deeper and maybe also it’s less satisfying to hear: I chose it because the process of living differently, with all its challenges and uncertainties, feels more authentic than any amount of conventional security.

Like love, it demands everything and promises nothing except the opportunity to become more fully yourself.

And perhaps that's the ultimate parallel between unconventional living and love: both require us to continually choose them, to show up each day ready to engage with the process, to remain open to the reality of what is.

We don't reach some final state of enlightenment or happiness.

Instead, we become more fully alive, more deeply engaged with the raw, beautiful process of living itself.

Even if that means sometimes looking like a confused mystic with too many dry bags and a questionable grasp on conventional reality.

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