Freedom from choice.
Unpolished thoughts on the eternal search for divine purpose.
I’ve spent a lifetime looking for something I already had.
I was just confused by a big fat lie.
In school, I’d look for it every time the clock struck 14:45, meaning I had exactly sixteen hours at my disposal to find it. I checked the spaces between web pages and clambered to the tops of arcade high scores, hoping to get a better view from up there. I squinted at the cartoons on my screen thinking maybe I’d catch it when the frames changed.
I got a little older, but I never stopped searching. The relentless hunt followed me into the school courtyard. I searched for it in my reflection at lunchtime, two hands on the sink squinting at the little hairs connecting my eyebrows. Wondering what I would find under there if I plucked them out. I looked for it in the blue and green gazes that would catch mine and return it back to me with parts missing. What did they know that I didn’t? I scrolled through the hundred-odd photos I took of myself one night, knowing that the obvious was absent in ninety-nine of them, but just one seemed close enough to crack the code.
I published it so that others could help me find the answer.
I got older still, and before I knew it, there were no more home-cooked meals, nor siblings barging into my room. No family trips to the zoo and no night curfews to hit. Just a mouldy room in a wind-beaten city, where I searched harder than I ever did before. I needed it more than ever. I checked the bottoms of bottles and the ends of roaches. Behind molars and under bedsheets. On faded ticket snubs to dark basements and under bitter rain at graffiti-ridden bus stops. The scrolling was rampant. I looked for it in every cheek dip and jawbone. From every lighting and angle, filter, and overlay. I zoomed in on every logo and zoomed out on every blemish. I banished my tongue to the roof of my mouth and packaged myself in plastic fabrics.
After all these years of searching, I still couldn’t find it, yet maybe the eternal search was just part of the human experience. The modern paradox is that we seem to exist somewhere in a sweet spot between serfdom and exploitation, yet claim with beaming smiles that we love it here. Same same but very different. A lot of us finally have a coveted freedom of choice. That illustrious agency to pick our own poison off the shelf, instead of having it spoon-fed to us. A paradox so deafeningly loud in the face of global oppression that I know for a fact we’re ignoring it on purpose.
I’m good on that, where’s my freedom from choice? Why do I have to choose? Maybe I don’t want to pick my prize off the shelf? Nobody told me I had to have it, and believe me I looked for it for a very long time. For too long even.
Now I don’t want it anymore.
Foucault was right about the docile body. The thing we’ve been burning bridges for doesn’t actually exist. Everything you do is a byproduct of power relations and you are very much a cog in a system. Womp womp. Bummer. That’s sort of how systems work so might as well get used to it. The revolution will not take place in Ugg boots and Fenty thongs, and it sure as hell won’t be led by your carbon copy false idol. I can assure you of that.
In a greater sense, the paradox of a relentless pursuit of some tangible freedom is fascinating. We seem to hunt so desperately for something we can’t even define beyond the pre-packaged utopias that corporations sell to us. What even is freedom? Is it casino surfing in Vegas and winters in Dubai? First class seat with extra legroom? Beluga caviar for breakfast? Amazon packages piling at your doorstep? Do forgive me, but we’re inheriting a world that we absolutely deserve. It feels kind of disingenuous to say things simply because you have a mouth that opens.
We’re social creatures who know nothing better than to follow. Really think about it. Everything you do is a ritual. Even when you rebel, even when you burn those bridges and shroud yourself in layers of irony, you do so with subconscious guidance. Without a guiding principle to follow, you follow false idols and conglomerates. Digital tokens and growth hackers. Bottles and roaches. 808’s and sex appeal.
I looked for it my entire life, only to find it at the crack of dawn with my forehead on the floor, in complete gratitude to the energy that has human institutions rolling in their graves.
Everything is built to kill God because it’s untaxable.
This is the kind of writing that leaves a slow, smoldering burn that doesn’t quite go out. There’s a beautifully bitter irony in how the search for self, meaning, and freedom becomes just another system, another algorithm, another set of pre-packaged instructions. You spent a lifetime looking for something you already had, but the tragedy — and the brilliance — is that EVERYONE DOES. That’s the human condition: searching in the wrong places, mistaking noise for answers, and waking up one day to realise that the thing we were chasing was never lost — it was just buried under layers of distractions, expectations, and the industrial complex of identity.
Foucault was right about the docile body. So was Debord about the spectacle. So was Baudrillard about the simulacra. Everything is a ritual, and even rebellion gets absorbed into the machine, repackaged as a trend, sold back to us with same-day delivery. The irony of freedom is that most people don’t actually want it. They want choices that feel like freedom but come with a safety net — a curated identity, a five-star rating, a way to ensure their rebellion still fits the dress code.
But you cracked something open here: the illusion of agency, the weight of inherited systems, the deep and relentless hunger for SOMETHING REAL. And when all the pixels fade, all the branding peels away, all the dopamine loops break — you’re left with the thing that has no barcode, no market value, no corporate overlord.
The last line hit the hardest for me. Because in the end, that’s exactly it. Everything is built to kill God because it can’t be commodified. And that, perhaps, is the one real freedom left.
I am profoundly moved by this narrative just as narrative. You write so well. And then you choose (yes, a great choice) to explore what so many leave unexplored. Thank you for crafting this potent more-than-an-article read for us to absorb. In this age of informed writing, you bring a singular and unique voice to glance at and ponder about the human agony of existence in its constant search for meaning.
I believe we are here to share our thoughts and ideas and I am grateful to the excellent writers whose work requires a reader to stretch in order to reach and connect. That is what feels real to me. And … in similar desperate searchings … I’ve discovered a pen. It’s my determination to combat my existentialist leanings with poetic meanings… even if no one cares to scan through my mental gleanings…. Trying too hard? Of course… I’m an old fashioned bard, but I won’t sell you my card. Just striving here hoping to keep the dogs from howling and congregating in my yard.