I was shopping with a friend in Trader Joe’s.

I hate running into acquaintances in public because the conversation is usually forced, engineered or clammy. When do you leave a short chat with someone you recognize next to a stack of granola and think “I’m so glad that happened!”?

Because you NEVER DO. If you ate eggs in the morning instead of cereal, you may have been spared.

I digress. I recognized a friend from past moons and told him I was moving to Europe. His eyes widened and he hyperbolically said something about how I am taking one for the team. I chuckled and my friend and I shuffled out of the store with our granola and affordable Pinot Grigio.

The reactions to my plans are always strong: eyes light up, occasionally a jaw will drop, or eyebrows furrow (in the case of my Nana). The word Europe elicits as strong a reaction as Disney World. It’s true, you could probably exchange the term Europe with yacht, lifetime of free gouda, or no more college debt to get the same responses. To tell you the truth, I find myself bracing when I tell people my plans because I know I have to witness their reactions, and respond to them. It kinda gets old, if I’m being honest. I didn’t win a contest, I made a decision. I don’t have a job lined up and no one’s holding a gun to my head telling me to go.

Rachel, my friend of unparalleled travel adventures (“slept in a Sarajevo train station” I have heard her say) said to me: “People think we are doing something impossible. Do you know how poor I am? It’s not impossible, it’s just hard.”

I look around my apartment, an exhibit of “on the fence” living, and Rachel is right. This isn’t impossible. I’m selling all of my things and moving. Go ahead and ask me if it’s been an easy decision, if I’ve loved selling all my carefully collected furniture that I’ll never find again.

If you feel like people who move abroad or set out on adventure with their clothing lodged in a bag on their back are living the high life, why aren’t you doing the same thing?

I’ll give you some space for your reasons:

Let me guess:

1: Money

2: Obligations

3: I like my life and, at the end of the day, I don’t want to leave it

4: I missed my chance to travel

5: I’m afraid

If you fall into any of these categories, congratulations- you are not uniquely oppressed, there are not chains on you. In response to 1-3: You have decided to stay. You have made decisions with and about your money, and it wasn’t to travel. You like your life, you have a home and most days, you like walking into it. If you hate the color on your living room wall, I imagine you have some say in the matter.

I took off 2.5 months to travel through Europe alone. After I got back from my “trip of a lifetime” (and it was an amazing experience) I met a couple who quit their jobs and traveled the world for a year, together. A YEAR, I SAY. They went to places I can only dream I will go. When I was in Dublin, I met a Canadian who was traveling Europe for 5 months- DOUBLE the amount of my trip, and much earlier in her 20s than me. It took me 6 years after college to make my trip happen. Why didn’t I go sooner, when having a career course wasn’t important and quitting your job doesn’t look reckless and bad to potential future employers? Why wasn’t I born in the EU so I could work freely in just about any European country I want?

That grass and how it is ever greener.

You know why grass is greener on the other side? You can’t see the dirt from far away.

To responses 4, you missed your chance. I will not argue with you. You missed your chance, your legs stopped working years ago, you don’t know how to find an airplane anywhere and there is no one, no one in the world, who knows how to feed your cat. I hear you. I agree with you, you can’t go to Europe. I recommend you stay home.

To response 5, you are afraid. Now, Let’s chat, Number 5. You need to go the most. You know why? You are the only one with a legitimate reason not to go. Fear, out of all the reasons listed, is the most debilitating of all. In fact, I judge you the least for not going because fear is a cloud that hovers over you until you can’t see what is real. If you decide not to go, I will understand.

But to the rest of you: get it together.

You’ve chosen your life. Love it or find something better.

Yes, you will lose things you love if you leave it behind but guess what, so am I, and so is everyone else who ever tied their shoelaces.

I am not brave, I am not lucky- I am deciding to tie my laces and go, because it outweighs the other options.

If you decide not to come, just know one thing- Disney Land is an amusement park, it costs a lot of money to run the place and it doesn’t look glamorous behind the curtain. Traveling is being a person in motion- you still have to smell yourself, be yourself, and live a human life. It’s not perfect, not anymore perfect than the one you are living today.

Embrace it or move out.