I have a few friends with whom I always have the most interesting and inspiring conversations. I meet them every now and then for lunch, after which my mind is always bubbling with ideas for blog posts, and I was lucky enough to see one of those friends just a few days ago.

This particular friend has also opted out and in. We had a conversation about ‘opting on’ and the blog post I wrote not too long ago. I told her how interesting it has been because after sharing with the world that I myself plan to opt on again, I have gotten so many really positive reactions.

And it’s true, I have gotten comments and messages from people – both from the academic world and from the business world – who have told me how happy they are that I am opting on. Although I’ve been thrilled by these reactions, I also find them extremely interesting. Especially since most of them seem to just be happy in general rather than specifically for me.

I’ve been thinking about what that might mean. I think maybe for academics there is a frustration regarding the way many things work in academia and the fact that someone is critical of it might be intriguing to them. But what about non-academics? They don’t have a bone to pick with the academic system. Maybe it’s just the thought of someone doing their own thing on their own terms and breaking free from predetermined paths that appeals to them?

Judging from the reactions people who opt out generally get from others this is probably true. Many wistfully say that they think the person opting out is brave and that they wish they could do it too, although I speak for many when I say that bravery often doesn’t have anything to do with it when you opt out. Opting out is often just something you feel like you have to do.

So my friend and I were discussing this and suddenly she says that opting out is, after all, quite trendy. It’s not the first time I’ve heard that, but it just seems so strange to me because opting out and in is not an easy thing to do. It isn’t something people do lightly. It’s usually a result of some kind of crisis that pushes a person to make such a big change. Without the push and a feeling that continuing that way they have just isn’t an option, they are generally not able to leap into the unknown, which opting out often is.

Still, opting out is romanticized, especially in the media. We have a romantic notion of what it is like and think that people who opt out do so bravely and happily in order to opt in to their dreams, where they can be the best versions of themselves. Although that sounds wonderful, that doesn’t necessarily provide us with a realistic picture of what is really going on.

So one of the things I came to think of when lunching with my good friend, was that if that is true, that opting out has become trendy, and if it is something that people not only long to do but think that they should do in order to be happy, then that is really quite troubling. Because since opting out is hard, and really isn’t something that most people do just because it is so hard, aren’t we setting people up for disappointment by creating a trend that really isn’t very easy to adopt even if we wanted to?

This actually goes hand in hand with the notion that happiness is something that we should strive for in order to be just that – happy. The problem is that if you search for happiness it is always going to elude you. I want to be happy as much as anyone else, but happiness is the result of other things. It is a result of a meaningful life filled with meaningful relationships and activities.

If we always dream of something else, we will never be happy with what we have. So instead of making opting out trendy, maybe we should rather focus on making being happy with what we’re doing now cool? Just as it is okay to opt out if that is what you need to do, it also needs to be okay to like your job and your life just the way it is.

So on that note, I’m going to stop here. In front of me I have a cup of coffee. The cup was a birthday gift from my husband and it very appropriately says, ‘Love what you do’. Pretty good advice if you ask me.