You Don’t Have to Live the Way Others Expect
But what does that mean? Unpacking the original tagline of The Art of Non-Conformity.
“You don’t have to live your life the way other people expect.”
I’m not sure where I first came up with it. It was just kind of internalized somehow. I used it for one of the first times in a manifesto I wrote in 2008 titled “A Brief Guide to World Domination.”
Then I used it as a line in my stump speech for the first book tour, when I visited readers in 63 cities (every U.S. state and Canadian province).
When you give a talk over and over, you get a sense for which parts will resonate. A joke that I thought was hilarious? No one laughed. Another line that I thought was a throwaway? It was a big hit.
So I learned to hit that line hard, looking people in the eye and pausing before/after I said it.
You don’t have to live your life the way other people expect. You can do good things for yourself and for others. You’ll be a better overall person if you prioritize yourself.
Somewhere along the way, either around then or just as time went by, it became a recurring motif.
It’s funny, because my original blog was VERY broad in its themes. I wrote about Life, Work, and Travel—in other words, I didn’t “choose a niche” at all!
There was an unintentional clarity about it. In a world where you were supposed to specialize, I was simply unable to, and something about the idea resonated.
I’ve had a bit of time since then—15 years!—to unpack it a bit. So what does it mean?
First, It Means What It Says It Means
It means what it says, full stop—“People have various expectations for you; you don’t have to follow them.”
Still, sometimes it’s good to explore these things in more detail.
We often imagine that some of the unnamed “people” who expect us to behave in certain ways are like evil bosses. They’re Monopoly villains, generic corporate figures who lurk in the shadows and issue edicts for the rest of us to follow.
But it’s just as true that the people we are close to have expectations of us. And this is harder to resist! Yet it’s just as essential, if not more so.
Sometimes, merely demonstrating that options exist can be powerful. Not everyone understands that there is a life beyond that which you’ve known.
Seeing this for the first time—or, better, feeling it in your body—is revelatory. You can travel! You can work other jobs, or you can make up your own job! There are relationship structures beyond what has been modeled for you.
What you were told as a child about all sorts of topics is now up for grabs. What will you decide about religion, politics, philosophy? How will you choose to live?
Then, there’s an implied next step with this understanding: If I don’t do what other people want me to do, then what do I do instead?
This is also a powerful revelation! You suddenly understand that you have choice, autonomy, the ability to decide for yourself.
And yes, sometimes this can be overwhelming. It’s generally easier to accept what’s being offered than to push for something different.
But despite whatever challenge this knowledge presents, I think it’s far more relieving. You can turn away from the path you’re on, and choose a different one. You can take the road less traveled by.
Or you can turn off the GPS and go back the way you came! What a wonderful set of options.
“You don’t have to live your life the way others expect.”
In short:
People want you to live a certain way, but you are free to choose what’s best for you. Go and do that!
Conversation Starters
What’s one way you live differently from other people you know?
Do you sometimes feel pressured to conform to expectations?
What’s been helpful to you in learning to think for yourself?
How is your summer going? (Or winter, for our southern hemisphere readers)
This week, I’m surfacing deep anger about being invaded by other people time and time again about a basic human activity— eating. What you think about what I eat is not interesting to me!
The idea that what people eat is somehow grounds for other people to feel superior, morally righteous, or just to make comments on – no! It’s absurd, tedious, boring, and pathetic.
Be a vegan — but don’t get in arguments with me and tell me I’m an animal killer! (As if tilling the soil to harvest a crop does not kill moles, voles, squirrels, rabbits, chipmunks, etc.? Give me a break. I’m not an idiot).
I’ve decided to do my own research and eat the way I want to. I’ve had someone shout across a table at me for salting my food. Salt?! The Romans paid their armies in salt — that’s the origin of the word ‘salary.’ Ignorance about the necessity of electrolytes is not grounds for harassing me for being a human with basic mineral needs. Considering I never eat processed food, exactly where else am I going to get my salt unless I actually put it on my food? Ugh!!
I was once eating an organic butter lettuce salad with organic olive oil and organic apple cider vinegar. I’m not sure exactly how much healthier or immune from criticism this particular meal could be. But someone felt the need to criticize how much vinegar I was putting on my salad! “Are you really going to use that much vinegar?“ In what universe does the amount of vinegar I use have anything to do with another adult? What the hell!
Last week it came up in conversation that I don’t eat fruit. I just don’t digest it – I have poor digestion, calm down. I can decide what I want to eat, and nobody ever died from not eating fruit. Instead of just being a normal human being, the person I was in conversation with said, “Oh, then, how do you get your antioxidants?“
We were standing in my kitchen, which looks somewhat like an herbal apothecary from the middle ages, with rows and rows of herbs in glass jars in plain sight on open shelving. Answer: geez, I don’t know, maybe if you open just one of your eyeballs for one second you could see that I am literally surrounded by antioxidants in jars around the perimeter my kitchen!!
We all get to decide what the hell we want to do in every area of our lives, because we’re all making it up as we go.
It is a FACT that people who do the standard conventional consensus thing are going to shoot their mouths off and feel entitled to harass us for the most minute infractions against the norm.
Keep on going! Let those fools feel superior about being a better human because they’re vegan, or they use less salt, or they use less vinegar, or they get their antioxidants in a better way.
When I encounter these fools, it’s an indication this is not my kind of person. I don’t want to be surrounded by people who can’t regulate their nervous systems enough to simply “live and let live.“ If they need to get up into my business about what I eat — judging vinegar? salt? the most mundane, absurd, ridiculous food choices I make? Then what else are they going to feel entitled to judge, to react to, to problematize my existence? What’s next? Criticizing how much I breathe?
No thank you! The more wakka flakka bs I get for daring to exist in front of normies, the more they teach me how extremely un-fun they are. Someone who criticizes something so unbelievably stupid as how much vinegar I use, is basically saying, “Hi! I am not fun to be around.“
Maya Angelou has a saying for this: “When someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time.“
Okay, I hear you loud and clear. And I will do everything I can to stop being in your presence, to stop eating in front of you, to stop socializing with you, and to stop being in a relationship with you. Because a “relationship” where I’m not free to do the most basic thing a human does — eat in peace — is no relationship at all. It’s covert narcissism, or emotional abuse, or control, or domination — but it’s not my definition of a relationship.
If I don’t have the basic freedom to choose my own path on the most primal levels of my fundamental humanity, screw this. I am walking away.
This got me thinking:
Freedom starts when you find the third option.
This is the place when your mind breaks free from constant comparison of either / or, and discovers that there is a whole world of choices around you. That there is even more beyond this third option.
And all these are available to you, right now.
You can walk right out of your trap.