Paradise Is Built for the Very Young and the Very Old
Koh Samui is perfect for the start and end of life. It's the middle - where you still have to build something - that's hard.
My father visited us here and summed the island up better than I could: “Koh Samui is ideal for grandparents and grandchildren.”
He’s right. This is one of the best places on earth to be very young or very old. Children grow up secure, barefoot, and free, without a care in the world. And retirees who come to spend their last years get an endless reel of breathtaking views to watch as the credits roll. The bookends of life are beautifully served here.
It’s the middle that’s the problem.
Because if you’re in mid-life - still building a career, still earning a living, still trying to become something - the island works against the very thing that’s pulled at me my whole life. There’s almost no FOMO here. People drive at 50 km/h, and life moves at the same pace: not much happens, and what does happens slowly. There’s little of the comparison and achievement pressure I grew up swimming in. No matter how much money you have, everyone ends up at the same café and the same supermarket. There are fewer signals, fewer reminders that you should be doing more, climbing more, proving more.
Which sounds like paradise - and mostly is. But I’ve spent my life running on exactly those signals. The drive, the FOMO, the constant low hum of “you should be building something bigger.” Take that away, and you find out how much of your motivation was actually yours, versus how much was just the current you were swimming in.
In the West it’s a rat race. Here it’s more of a sloth crawl. The rat race is exhausting. But the sloth crawl has its own quiet danger: it’s very easy to stop moving entirely, and feel completely fine about it.
I don’t think the answer is fast or slow anymore. It’s choosing your pace on purpose, instead of just absorbing whatever the place around you sets.