Back in the Netherlands, I had built a life I thought I wanted.

I owned my own house.

I had my own car.

I traveled to exotic destinations several times a year.

I worked part-time and enjoyed plenty of free time.

After becoming single again, I went on dates and had fun.

On paper, everything looked exactly as I had imagined it years before.

The funny thing is that long before I met my wife, I had already grown tired of that lifestyle.

It got old surprisingly fast.

I had achieved many of the things I thought would make me happy.

Yet something was missing.

Then I met my wife.

She was very different from me.

And that turned out to be one of the best things that could have happened.

We became a team.

Not in a co-dependent way.

But in a way that allowed us to elevate each other’s lives and help each other thrive.

Before long, we were setting goals together.

And achieving them together.

Goals I would never have imagined for myself.

During our first five years together in the Netherlands, we accomplished more than I had during many years on my own.

When we wanted to do something, we did it.

When we set a goal, we worked toward it.

And more often than not, we achieved it.

Then life took another unexpected turn.

My wife received a job opportunity in Japan that she could not let pass by.

I supported her decision.

Ironically, we had already talked about living abroad one day.

Thailand was the idea at first.

Japan wasn’t really part of the plan.

Yet opportunities have a way of changing plans.

At the same time, I had grown increasingly unhappy with my desk job.

Even though I worked part-time and earned enough to support a comfortable lifestyle, the work itself had become a drag.

Then I was unexpectedly let go and received a settlement.

At the time, it felt uncertain.

Looking back, it gave me something far more valuable than money.

It gave me time.

Time to rethink what I wanted.

The strange thing is that I didn’t really know.

Somewhere along the way, I had also become financially independent.

That gave us the freedom to make choices we otherwise could not have made.

Eventually, I moved to Japan.

And started a life that looked nothing like the one I had carefully planned years earlier.

A life with uncertainty.

A life without a clear roadmap.

A life I had not figured out in advance.

Yet somehow it turned out to be a life that allowed both my wife and me to continue growing together.

None of it was anticipated.

None of it was part of the original plan.

Would I go back to my old lifestyle?

I heavily doubt it.

Sometimes I think the most important realization is this:

Getting what I wanted taught me what I actually wanted.

And it turned out to be something entirely different.

Looking back, this photo from a hike near Davos feels strangely symbolic. We didn’t know where life would lead us. We simply kept walking together.