“Do you ever crave a simple life?”

“Yes, all of the time, but that’s not for me.”

Anni and I walked the bend of a cobbled road that led through a quiet neighborhood in rural Portugal. In that place, where the houses hardly stirred, we imagined people lived quiet lives — similar lives to the people we had left in the towns we once called home. They would always live in the same place, doing the same things, with the same people and never feel the need to strive. Some would call it ordinary but I don’t care to label it.

Back then in 2023, we had missions, which was just a spiritually snobby way to say that we felt strongly compelled to create or contribute to something that would elevate the human race. We had the feeling of purpose without any idea what our individual purpose was. The feeling was exciting and unnerving, like waiting for a bus on the side of a dusty, trash covered highway in rural India. The uncertainty of whether the bus would actually come was borne of lack of reassurance from the usual signals: a bus stop, a sign, or others waiting in a cluster who seemed to be traveling. The feeling of un-revealed purpose was lonely and felt like a burden to carry at times.

Then there were times I felt flashes of something that was like a stray helium balloon rising: inevitable and effortless. In those moments a scene would present in my mind. A rolling hill of green grass, a small home in solitude, the view from a rocker on a large porch, an open desert. I was sitting, wandering, staring and aimless. In these fantasies, my purpose was just to exist. I imagined what it was like to be without responsibility or the weight of having the skill and awareness to have a life of significance — to live a simple life.

I didn’t realize for a long time that the feeling I had in those fleeting visions was the feeling of being. The feeling was a right to just exist. I had been unconsciously chasing and simultaneously fearing this feeling for a long time and was tired.

I had watched everyone around me needing, striving, reaching, searching and pushing for something of a different name, and I played the game too. I watched people be drawn to what could be, instead of what is — I too felt splintered and lost in this effort. There was community in dysfunction, distraction and desire, and it wasn’t leading anywhere productive. None of this has changed, but I have.

Being is something I have an acquired taste for, but cannot claim natural expression of it. It was just last week that I finally understood that I have a right to exist. I felt like an imposition, inconvenience and invisible at times. I couldn’t say no and I people pleased. I apologized for other people’s mistakes and justified their wrong-doings. Recently I became aware that I didn’t feel I had the right to exist. Recently, I learned where it came from. Recently I became free.

Today, I am the opposite of the qualities I described above.

In the process, I’ve noticed that being isn’t just about what you do in the world, it’s about who you are. With the right to exist, comes the right to be. You can work years to unwire patterns of behavior that aren’t yours, and your old personality, but without the right to exist and be, it will be a fight. You’ll need those parts of you to cope with living in a world where you don’t feel like you’re allowed to be. You’ll never feel like you belong.

When I gained the right to be, I gained the freedom to let go — of the mask, the coping strategies, the adapted behaviors — and it felt good.

I still crave a simple life, and I still crave a life of significance, but I know what I’m craving isn’t the same as when I walked, feet aching, over the cobble stones through the small, quiet streets. I am excited for the day that I can do what’s natural with ease: to be, to live and to exist on the seamlessly unfolding path towards doing something that contributes to the elevation of the human race.