That good good Euro Lifestyle

One thing I love about my European friends is that they’re always encouraging me to focus less on prestige, work, and the rat-race. They’re happy to ask me about work, but could care less about if I am a hairdresser or software engineer (as long as I am happy). This is definitely not the case with my US friends where most people stay within their socio-economic class and blue-collar workers and white-collar workers rarely mix outside of childhood friendships.

In Berlin I have plenty of ambitious friends. Some of them are so career driven that they’d fit right in with my NYC friends. Most of my friends are quietly pursuing their careers, very much “working to live” and not the other way around. These friends, while not wildly wealthy, seem to be the happier people in my life. Which got me thinking…

Have you ever noticed that not everyone in Italy (as an example) seems like they have a therapist like seemingly everyone does in the United States? That (in Europe) every grocery store isn’t filled with aisles of supplements, probiotics, prebiotics, collagen powders, or green powders (this is becoming more common, but you’d usually need to go to a specialty store for these things). Most European major cities don’t have a big gym, pilates studio, yoga studio, HIIT classes, or spinning studios on every corner. More and more I feel like due to the modern American lifestyle, things that should be happening in, or should be a part of daily life are made into “supplementary activities” which are then offered as a service, package, or product (basically anything you can pay for with your time and money). We used to live in communities and talk to people every day. Italy’s modern-day hunter gathered around a fire are folks gathered around a table on a terrace after dinner sipping espresso.

Nowadays, we “don’t have time” for lounging around and having a midday hour-long coffee break.

Don’t get me started on the quality of food in the United States. The food is produced with such a quantity of pesticides, sometimes pumped full of ingredients and hormones that have been long-since banned in Europe, and chemicals that people need to take vitamins, probiotics, prebiotics, etc. just to get the food down. Then people need to go spend hours at the gym working out to ensure they’re not inflamed or fat from their sustenance. Other countries have healthy and pure food to begin with (Albert Heijn is heaven’s grocery store). Other countries/cultures include activities like walking in their daily activity and not as a way to reduce your daily total caloric intake.

It’s no wonder that in order to live a healthy lifestyle in the United States you need to wake up super early so that you can squeeze in a workout or meditation to survive your day and a session with your therapist in the evening since you’re not socializing anyways. Everyone is exhausted but businesses are thriving.

My friends in the US definitely seem to be more stressed, constantly battling some illness (physical or mental), and always tackling their next big life milestone. This is also probably why more of my friends in the US are homeowners, and also make more money than any of my European friends. For me, the math doesn’t add up.

This is definitely an idealized summary of life in Europe - we’ve got our own host of problems (lack of economic mobility and jobs in Southern Europe is a big tradeoff for their laissez faire lifestyle) and I’d say that there are plenty of big cities in Europe that take after American cities (London and Frankfurt to name a few). In a world where I have to pick between being a little poorer + happier, or richer + stressed, I’d definitely pick the former.