February 2026
Toronto, Summer 2024. I walked into a cafe with my co-intern. A freshly painted mural sprawled across the wall, prompting people to share what they want to be. “Successful”. “Confident”. “Happy”. “An astronaut”. “Good at pool”.
I’d like to contribute to the community art, but what do I want? I take my time picking out a marker, taking off the cap, and dawdling over to the wall, but… nothing. I don’t know what I want. I want everything and nothing. I also want to be successful, confident, happy, rich enough to buy my materialistic desires. At the same time, I’m simply grateful to be where I am.
Instinctively, I put marker to wall and my hand writes on behalf of me - “free”.
My co-intern looks at me blankly. Now I feel silly. What is “free” supposed to mean? We live in one of the most privileged societies in the world. Of course we are free. I just shrug. We get our coffee and go back to the office.
If your time is taken up by things you don’t want, like a demanding job or the inability to stop scrolling;
if your decisions are made by others, such as familial or societal pressure;
if you are too attached to things or people or even your comfort zone;
if you live within the walls of social or self-imposed constructs, letting fear (of failure, embarrassment, rejection, conflict, etc.) or fomo control you;
if you are guided by your bubble or the media or corporations instead of thinking for yourself;
then you are not truly and completely free.
I don’t know if it’s possible fully let go of the things that tie us down from freedom, but maybe we can get closer. I have done two Big Things for myself to try to break out of this matrix:
“I am not who I think I am, nor who you think I am, but who I think you think I am.” By getting out of my hometown and instead living somewhere where no one knew me, I could do whatever I wanted. I lived without being influenced by my social bubbles or being defined by the limits of how other people perceive me.
I chose the path less taken and worked for a German startup instead of returning to my corporate internship. This was way outside my comfort zone, but figuring out so much on my own made me feel capable to figure out new things in the future.
The world is an open-concept game that can be experienced in so many different ways. By exploring it on my own, I had to turn off my autopilot setting. I replaced my typical routines with an approach to life involving more curiosity, ambiguity, and lust for life.
I fit my whole life into a 32L backpack (and a daypack). Not that I had many worldly possessions to begin with, but I had to let go of many things I felt I ‘needed’ in my life. I also had to be intentional with new purchases, which was harder than expected when consumer culture permeates every nook and cranny of my life.
On this trip, I did a 7-day silent meditation retreat in the jungles of Koh Samui. Beyond learning about core Buddhist principles such as embracing impermanence and non-attachment, days and days without external stimuli showed me that true freedom comes from introspection rather than escapism.