settling down is boring

Keep the white picket fence dream, I don't want it.

Last weekend, I made the mistake of telling my uncle I declined an opportunity to turn my temporary work gig into a permanent staff position.

“Don’t you want to settle down?” he asked.

I blinked at him. “No, actually I don’t.”

As a first generation Pakistani-American woman, I get multiple variations of this question all the time. And all the inquiries have one thing in common: the underlying threat of domesticity. It’s funny because I most commonly hear it from the people who hate domesticity themselves: the aunties stuck in bad marriages, the exhausted parents who initially didn’t plan to have any kids, the uncles who hide behind a fake work schedule to dodge their families.

I feel like I’m asked this question often because for most people, this is the only life they know. Immigrant scripts typically follow the timeline of birth, school, college, marriage, parenthood, and death. Mild deviations are allowed, but the second you try to fundamentally alter this timeline, you become an outcast within your community. Especially as a woman, because not getting married once you’re past 25 leads people to think you’re either closeted or a piece of work.

My lifestyle is nomadic on purpose. I travel because I want to. I may have other reasons I use to justify why I do what I do to the familial elders, but the primary motivation is freedom. For a few months a year, I get to pretend to be a local in a different city. I get to learn the world is an expansive place with all kinds of wonderful and open-minded people. I make new friends and date men for a short season, hoping that I am a positive life-altering force along the way.

Despite popular belief, you can absolutely be a free spirit without succumbing to chaos. Similar to being young at heart, being a free spirit is a state of mind. Refusing to settle down doesn’t mean you suddenly stop paying your bills or show up to a new city with no savings. It doesn’t mean you leave a wreckage of broken hearts along the way, operating under the delusion that being “tied down” means surrendering to a suburban lifestyle. It’s not having children with multiple partners or catching STIs along the way.

My idea of love is deeply rooted in monogamy, except instead of having a big house with four kids, I want someone who I can travel and have fun experiences with. And maybe we can also have a cute pet that doesn’t talk back to us if we really get that lonely. I think I could be a good parent, but I don’t have an interest in changing diapers or teaching a little booger how to solve a quadratic formula. If I got married, it would just be two free spirits instead of one.

For some people, the traditional script is their dream. And that’s okay, because we can’t all be city hopping and globetrotting in times of political instability. There’s nothing wrong with finding meaning in being a parent, just as there’s nothing wrong not wanting to bring sentient life to this world. I want to be more than just someone’s wife or daughter, but I know many other women find fulfillment with devotion to their societal roles.

I reject an average life because I know I’m not an average person. Being average is not inherently good or bad; it just is. I feel morally obligated to live out my deepest desires because I know the same desires were beaten out of centuries of women in my bloodline. I’m the black swan now because I realized that being a golden child was never my choice.

Forcing yourself to settle down when you don’t want to is a form of self-betrayal. It not only harms yourself, but it also spews in the form of resentment towards others around you. Choosing to be a free spirit is not mutually exclusive to being a responsible, compassionate, and wise person!