Digital nomads are only half-right about happiness

Adrift and unshackled, we're starved of the familiarity of place

He searched my face. “But why are you alone? Only God goes alone.”

A question asked of the travel writer Colin Thubron, in Iran.

When we travel, we play with the idea of freedom. We spend and eat as if money and waistlines mattered less, and we carve out a window of time when the humdrum concerns of daily life will not intervene – having put a few horizons between ourself and our home to make sure of it. Pretending we are unfettered from the obligations of life, our old stress may temporarily drift away.

Why does domesticity become entwined with the origins of stress? Because home is the epicentre of the machine that is our life. It’s our realm of tottering dominoes. Home is what we work for. And ultimately, it’s what we stand to lose.

Digital nomads think they have the solution: no home, no stress. Be free, live lightly, build nothing solid.

They’re half right. If you’re lucky enough to be able to work remotely and you don’t have obligations to be in one place, you can live without a home (and potentially save money too).

Unshackling de-risks your life. When you can live out of a backpack and no one depends on you, what’s the worst that can happen? Comfort and convenience are as transient and expendable as you are. Not much can take away your happiness or your liberty, or the fulfilment you may find in the work that you do. It’s fun to be a cork in the ocean. Whatever happens, it’s just little old you, same as always.

… Right?