Ben shares a moment of honest reflection from the road: reading a couple of hard-edged arguments about work and freedom, trying to find a counterpoint, and landing somewhere more open than either side offers.
I came across a couple of posts recently. Both making the same point, essentially: that the freedom we think we have, choosing our jobs, our cities, our houses, isn’t really freedom at all if we have to work endlessly just to keep any of it. One went as far as calling it a rebranded version of slavery, just with better marketing.
I sat with it, tried to find a counter-argument, a more generous way of looking at it. Honestly, I struggled, and if I’m being fully honest, I’m not sure I even wanted to find one. I’ve never fully bought into the idea that the structure most of us are born into is the only shape a good life can take, and the longer we’ve been out here, the harder that’s become to unsee. That’s an uncomfortable thing to admit, because right now, for me and Claire, none of it is even relevant. We’ve stepped outside that structure for a while. But the truth is, one day we may have to step back into it. So the question isn’t as distant as it feels.
Where I land, and where I don’t
I don’t think it’s slavery. That word carries weight that doesn’t belong here, and using it flattens something that deserves a more honest look, not a shock headline. Nobody’s chaining us to a desk. We do choose our jobs, our cities, our houses, even if the range of choices sits inside a structure none of us built.
But I’ll say this plainly: I do think the structure itself is by design, not an accident of history, and I don’t think it’s benign. Systems don’t tend to keep people busy, indebted, and short on time to question things by chance. That’s a stronger position than I’m always comfortable saying out loud, because it can sound like an accusation aimed at anyone still inside it, and it isn’t. Most people work to cover the basics: shelter, food, security. That’s not new, humans have always worked to survive. What’s changed is how much of that work has drifted away from meeting a need directly and towards paying for the right to meet it. Rent instead of shelter you built. A supermarket instead of food you grew. A structure most of us didn’t choose, that we were simply born into, and rarely stop to question, because questioning it takes time and space that the structure itself doesn’t really leave you.
That’s the bit I find genuinely interesting, and honestly, unsettling. Not just whether the system serves most people badly, I think in a lot of ways it does, but whether it’s the only shape a life can take. And whether most of us have ever actually had the space to ask.
Why this isn’t an anti-work article
This is where familiesreimagined.com comes in, and it’s worth being clear about what this isn’t. It’s not heavy going. It’s not pushy. It’s not trying to convince anyone that a job, a mortgage, a routine, is something to escape or be ashamed of. Plenty of people build genuinely good lives inside that structure, ours looked like that for years too, and it wasn’t miserable, it wasn’t a trap. It was just a shape we’d never stepped outside of long enough to know if there was another one.
What we’re doing right now is that stepping outside, temporarily, imperfectly, expensively at times. And what it’s given us more than anything isn’t a verdict on the system we left, it’s space. Space to notice what we actually miss (a bed, a Sunday roast, a dressing gown, people) and what we don’t. Space to watch our children make friends with kids who don’t speak their language. Space to actually ask the question, rather than just living inside the answer we were handed.
A question that cut through all of it
Last night, someone asked me a question that landed a lot more clearly than any of this back-and-forth in my head. We got talking to a teacher who’d recently quit his role, he didn’t believe the education system, as it stands, fits the world his students are actually heading into. He asked me: what’s your biggest highlight since leaving the UK to travel?
I didn’t have to think long. Waking up every day without an alarm. Our kids climbing into bed with us for morning cuddles. No rushing around, no real schedule, no stress.
That’s it. That’s the whole answer. Not a landmark, not a view, not a place we’d ticked off a list. Just mornings with nowhere to be. It’s a small thing to put next to a debate about freedom and systems and slavery, but honestly, I think it says more than any of it. Whatever the structure is or isn’t, that feeling was missing from our mornings before, and it isn’t missing now.
The honest, unresolved bit
We don’t know yet if this is permanent, and we’ve said that from the start. We may well fall back into some version of the structure we stepped out of. If we do, I don’t think that’s failure, and I don’t think it means the question wasn’t worth asking. Knowing you chose something, having actually seen an alternative, is different from never having looked.
So no, I don’t think it’s slavery, old or new, that word does more harm to the argument than good. But I do think the structure most of us live inside was built to keep us inside it, and calling that out plainly feels more honest than pretending “freedom” is a settled fact just because we’ve always called it that. Somewhere between shrugging it off and rejecting it outright is where most of us are actually living, and it’s worth asking, every so often, whether the shape you’re in is the one you’d choose if you were choosing it fresh today.
We don’t fully agree on this, and that’s fine
Claire and I don’t see eye to eye on everything when it comes to our longer-term plans, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing to admit. We’re still working out what our future actually looks like, and that means genuinely compromising, not one of us simply winning the other round, but finding what actually meets both our needs and our family’s needs. If anything, having to work through that together has taught us more than agreeing easily ever would.
And whenever we do settle somewhere, whatever that looks like, we don’t want it to mean sliding straight back into the exact pattern we stepped out of. The whole point of this journey has been to pick up skills, perspective, and a clearer sense of what actually matters to us, and to use all of that deliberately, not just default back to how things were because it’s familiar. This trip is helping us work out what genuinely looks right for our family’s life, so that when the time comes, we get to reimagine what that looks like, rather than simply picking up where we left off.
What else is possible when you stop assuming the shape you were born into is the only one available?
FAQ
Is Families Reimagined against traditional work or a “normal” life? Not outright, no, though we won’t pretend we’re fully neutral on it either. Plenty of people build genuinely happy lives within that structure, and we’re not here to tell anyone that’s wrong. We’re just more interested in whether it’s the only option than most of us are ever given the space to ask.
Do you think you’ll go back to a more conventional lifestyle eventually? Possibly, and we’re honest about that. This isn’t framed as an escape we’ll never return from, it’s a chance to actually see what other shapes are available before deciding.
What’s the actual point of asking these questions? Space and awareness. Even if you end up choosing the same life you already had, choosing it with your eyes open is different from never having questioned it at all.
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