A Different Kind of Life: Pondering the Road Not Taken

“Do you ever wonder what it would be like if we had a different kind of life?”

I asked my husband this rather deep question as we shared a plate of fries, our few fun moments together before heading to the airport and our return to normal life.

I got to tag along to a company retreat in beautiful and warm Key West, Florida. After a few days spent reading and lounging on the beach, I wasn’t ready to head home yet.

I’ve often said that for the most part, I love my life. But part of how I maintain that love is that I don’t think too hard of what I might have instead. For for a couple of minutes I let myself wonder.

We have rarely traveled. We began our marriage as starving students, and then became home-owners that led almost directly to having children, and becoming a single income family. We have rarely taken vacations, and weekends away the two of us are few.

As I sat on that beach I wondered how things might have been different if we had chosen not to have children. Would we be debt-free now? Would we still live in our first house, having no need for a larger space? As a dual-income family would we be traveling, taking more vacations and perhaps living life at a more leisurely pace?

But the fact is my perspective is subjective and skewed. We’ve gotten by for years on much less money than we made with our two combined incomes. I don’t honestly know what we used to do with it. (I didn’t do the budget and finances back then.) We had most nights of the week free, and our weekends were our own. Yet I remember feeling busy.

I think back to only having one child and how much simpler it was, but I couldn’t know that until I had another. The very perspective that allows me to look back and wonder wouldn’t exist if I had taken a different road.

As I’m reacclimating to the daily drama and chaos here at home, a part of me is still on that beach. But would I have been able to enjoy those moments as deeply, if I didn’t have all of this to leave behind?