Freedom is stopping the 'escape'

Work is stressful? Vacation is freedom! Home is stressful? Meeting Friends is freedom! Love life is getting toxic? Taking a break is freedom! Country is shit? Moving abroad is freedom!

For a long time, I thought freedom was about getting away — from discomfort, from difficult emotions, from people or situations that stirred something unpleasant in me. If something felt heavy or confusing, I found a way to move around it, rise above it, or simply distract myself until it passed. But I came to see that freedom isn’t found in escape.

It’s found in the stopping — in staying with what we most want to run away from.

It started with a simple awareness: avoiding the situation doesn’t make it go away. It only hides it for a while, like dust brushed under a rug — out of sight, but still there. And eventually, it finds its way back into life again, often disguised in new forms, new faces, new patterns.

There came a moment when I began to notice this — the repetition. The same discomfort would show up, again and again, until I couldn’t ignore it anymore.

So, I stopped escaping. And that’s when the real work began.

Staying in a situation I wanted to avoid felt almost unbearable at first. My mind looked for exits — distraction, justification, denial — anything to not feel. But every time I paused and allowed myself to just be with what was happening, I realised something quietly powerful: the discomfort passes when it’s faced. Not when it’s fixed. Not when it’s explained. But simply when it’s faced.

Sometimes, confrontation doesn’t mean saying something out loud or taking bold external action. Sometimes it just means staying present — not numbing out, not escaping, not turning away.That presence itself is confrontation.

It’s as if the moment you stop resisting, the energy of the situation begins to move on its own. The feelings that once seemed unbearable start to soften, not because the situation changes, but because you do.

Through this, I’ve realised that freedom isn’t about controlling what happens. It’s about no longer needing to run from what happens. It’s about being able to sit in the discomfort of uncertainty and know that you will create through it.

It’s about letting the wave of fear, guilt, anger, or sadness rise — and trusting that you can ride that wave. And when it does, what’s left behind is a quiet clarity — the kind that doesn’t shout or demand, but simply is.

Freedom, I’ve come to see, is not the absence of pain.

It’s the presence of awareness.

It’s the courage to stay — when everything in you wants to leave.

And sometimes, that simple act of staying becomes the most profound expression of liberation.