spartana, I’m enjoying your thoughts on what might be considered badass. I’ve been thinking about them since reading your posts last night.
In my world, it’s so common for whole families or strangers to share a studio space, or families or individuals to live year round in a van or tent, that anything else seems highly luxurious. While many of these simply have no choice but to live badass, a good number of people in Vancouver are living in a van, car, or tent by choice to hit an excellent saving rate, or sharing and strategically managing a small house with 11 people -including strangers and babies- so they can donate to charitable causes. These seem ERE/purist/badass to me. Voluntarily paying higher-than-necessary shelter costs while living comfortably with only our favourite fellow adult, not so much.
I guess it’s relative to what’s around us.
Because it’s normal in my world to live (voluntarily or involuntarily) in less conventional circumstances (L’Arche, CWH, wild, street, car, shed, 12 ppl in 1100 sq ft), nothing short of that seems badass. It seems luxurious, wildly comfortable.
To me, badass is intentionally getting uncomfortable in order to effect positive outcomes. So, badass will be different for every person and will change all the time (as soon as the latest status quo becomes easy/comfy).
I see badass as (for most ppl) moving into a tent while they go to uni, or living in a van for three years while working full-time to save for their bigger goal. Or getting and staying clean from meth. Or putting themselves aside to parent thoroughly while without external resources. Or taking charge of one’s health through nonpreferred food choices. Or working three jobs to support dependents near or far. Stoicism, yes! Doing the thing that feels too hard.
I think the forum is a helluvalot of truly awesome people, but most of us have relatively soft lives. We live comfortably (even if unconventionally), we do things that are fun for us, we forgo our nonfavourite things and choose our favourite ones. That’s nice for us, but I don’t see a lot of badassity here. Nothing wrong with that, just not badass.