Man Who Lived Alone on an Mediterranean Island For Nearly 30 Years

Financial freedom means that you can do what you want. Now consider that if you earn like everyone else and spend like everyone, you’ll end up like everyone else. This is why unconventional people are the most likely to achieve early retirement. I sometimes envy those people who are satisfied with the idea of working 9-5 under a boss until you’re 65 years old. I just can’t do it.

This is why I like reading about unconventional people. Some readers couldn’t get past the fact that Christopher Knight lived alone in the Maine woods for 27 years stole things to eat. Well, here’s a NatGeo story about a person who lived alone on an island for 28 years completely legally. Via NextDraft.

78-year-old Mauro Morandi is the sole caretaker of an Mediterranean island that became closed to tourists after being designated a National Park. He feels very strongly about preserving the island’s natural beauty. He has a job and a purpose. He gets food delivered to him every two weeks and there are limited visitors, so he is not a complete hermit, but he is the island’s only permanent resident. Still, I observed a lot of common ground between these two people who both lived alone for nearly 30 years.

• They enjoyed the silence. “What I love the most is the silence,” Morandi says. “The silence in winter when there isn’t a storm and no one is around, but also the summer silence of sunset.”
• They never felt lonely. Morandi says he is always surrounded by life.
• They made peace with the idea of dying alone. “I will never leave,” Morandi says. “I hope to die here and be cremated and have my ashes scattered in the wind.”
• They were avid readers.
• They never got sick. Morandi says he has never gotten sick and attributes this to his good genes. Knight never got sick either, but observed that germs come from other people. If you live alone, there is nobody to spread their foreign germs to you.
• They view themselves as a small part of the world, not controllers of the world. “We think we are giants that can dominate the Earth, but we’re just mosquitos,” Morandi says.

Here’s another NatGeo story about an off-grid commune in North Carolina, but it didn’t interest me nearly as much. Is it really living off-grid when you live off of donated food and go back into town for WiFi? Is is really a commune when only one person stays year-round? It seems more like a place where people visit and play at being “off grid” for a few months before going back their traditional lives.