Would you rather be a prisoner who escapes to freedom, or would you prefer to stay inside the prison walls?
Okay, this really sounds like a question that makes no sense. But I promise, it's an important one, or at least an interesting one.
Around a year and a half ago, I quit my job and traveled to the other side of the world in search of a place where I could start rebuilding my life.
And no, this is not the typical and nowadays disturbingly popular story you see all over social media called "I quit my job and left everything behind to travel the world and talk about how it's cool to have no structure and responsibilities in your life."
The circumstances under which I left my job and my home country are not exactly common. You can find out more about them in my essays where I talk about having a price on my head, living with a bulletproof vest, and how consistency saved my life. However, I think those circumstances, although interesting for most people, don't really matter for what I want to share with you in this essay.
In one and a half years of quitting my job and trying to create a stable online income, I've learned a lot about business, but I've learned even more about myself and about life.
I think I even learned a lot of new things about how our society works and what that means for your development as an individual. Things that not a lot of people get a chance to learn, at least not through their own experience.
Recently, I started writing down all the lessons I've learned. Mostly for myself to reflect on them and for my family and friends to hopefully use them in some way.
Since this journey I'm on wouldn't be possible or would at least be significantly more difficult and infinitely less enjoyable without you, my readers, I think it's only fair to share these lessons with you just as I would share them with my family and friends.
I don't have a full list of lessons to share with you just yet, and I am still thinking about the format in which I would like to share them.
But I do know what the first thing I want to share with you is. I am hesitant about calling it a lesson. Does "lesson" mean that it contains some concrete advice? If it does, then this is more of an observation. But I am convinced it's an extremely valuable observation. As I said, it's something not a lot of people get the chance to learn. And once you learn it, it might change the way you look at your life's journey.
I won't bother you with unnecessary details of my life, but a brief overview of my educational and professional path is needed to get to the point of this essay.
Straight out of high school, I enrolled at a local university to study law. However, during my first semester, I was also attending elimination-style tests to get into the aviation academy for air traffic controllers.
Near the end of my first semester, I received an email that I'd passed the final test and that I had beenĀ admitted into the aviation academy. I put my law studies on pause (and never resumed them) to move to a neighboring country where the aviation academy was located.
After one year of theoretical studies and simulator training at the aviation academy, I moved back to my home country to do on-the-job training at my local airport for another year.
In October 2016, after passing the final test with live traffic, I officially became an air traffic controller.
Around two and a half years after graduating from high school, I not only had a stable and high-paying job but also a promising career with plenty of potential for advancement.
After five years on the job and some of those advancements coming to fruition, the events that I described in my previously mentioned essays took place. I decided to quit my job and restart my life somewhere else. If you are curious about how I had the courage (or stupidity) to leave one of the highest-paying jobs in my country and move to a different continent when I still had no other source of income, you can read How Consistency Saved My Life.
Now, finally, the "prisoner who escaped" part.
If we forget my personal circumstances for a moment, I did something that a lot of people nowadays are thinking about doing or are at least wondering what it's like: I left the conventional life path. That is, I stopped living the life society had already planned for me and everyone else: kindergarten - elementary school - high school - university - a 9-to-5 job - retirement - the end.
Now, I am not here to tell you what you should do with your life, nor do I think there is a "one-size-fits-all" solution. In fact, I see major pros and cons for both following the conventional life path and creating your own. And I am open to discussing them.
But the lesson, or observation, I want to share is a sign of caution to those who are thinking about "breaking free" from the conventional life path.
Imagine spending decades in prison, starting from the earliest age when it's possible for you to be incarcerated. The daily routine inside the prison walls and the rules of the prison system are the only way of life you know.
Then, after decades, you escape the prison. And let's say that somehow you get to a place where you don't have to worry about being identified and arrested. You are free to live the way you want.
At first, you would surely feel ecstatic. But wouldn't you, soon after, feel lost and even terrified? What to do, how to live your life, when all you know is life behind bars? The freedom you are given feels like too much for you to handle. Maybe, after decades behind bars, that kind of life is the best life for you?
It might sound overly dramatic, but this is how you feel when you decide to leave the conventional life path.
I know that comparing the education system with prison is an overused and somewhat cheesy metaphor, but I find it very fitting in this case. Not in the sense of the conventional education journey being an entirely negative experience, but in the sense of you becoming so accustomed to that way of life that you don't know anything else. And the same pretty much continues with most conventional career paths.
Even one of the most basic things you do daily, such as waking up at a specific time, has always been conditioned by someone else's rules. Most people get up on time so that they won't be punished by their teacher or their boss. If you are one of those people, I would advise you not to take this fact lightly. If you were "your own boss," no matter how passionate you were about what you do, I assure you it would be immensely more difficult to get up on time and start your day in a productive and organized way. And here we are talking just about the most basic thing needed to start your day. Now imagine all the other actions and decisions you would need to make on a daily and weekly level without anyone else pushing you to do them.
Hopefully, now you understand why I shared my education and career journey. Throughout my life, just like most people, I followed someone else's plan and a schedule that aligned with that plan. Once I left the conventional life path, it was up to me to create a plan and a schedule and then follow them. And it has been, ever since, up to me to put in the work every day and to regularly revisit that plan and schedule to see if they need to be changed or adjusted in some way.
You might say that there are difficult decisions to make even when following a conventional life path, like picking a university or a job. And you would be right; those are major life decisions. But once you've made them, you are back to following the plan that has been laid out for you. I'm not saying that's easy or the wrong thing to do. Far from it. But it's definitely less stressful than creating your own path, one step at a time. And it might be a good idea to think about whether you want and need that kind of stress in your life.
Is creating your unique life path worth the stress, uncertainty, and confusion it brings? That will depend on the person. I wouldn't trade the journey I'm on for any other kind of life. But I also think that this path of quitting your job and being "free" is irrisponsibly being presented as a dream that would make everyone's life better. I will risk sounding arrogant because I am in a way referring to myself, but you have to be an exceptionally resilient, disciplined, and high agency individual to make it work and enjoy it.
If everyone could give this "freedom" a try, I believe most people would find that they prefer following the conventional path. And there is nothing wrong with that. The prison analogy wasn't meant to say that you are a prisoner because you follow the conventional life path, and those who don't are free. It's meant to warn you of the disorientation and confusion you will face if you decide to make that leap.
Is there, after all, a concrete piece of advice here? I guess there is. One thing that has helped me not be affected by this "escaped prisoner syndrome" as much as I could've been is the habit of creating my day. Way before I left my job, the free time in my day and my life had a structure. And that structure was created by me. That's why I never felt like a slave to the system when I worked at my regular job. I felt that much of my life was still directed by me. And once I left my job, the feeling of directing my day and my life wasn't so unfamiliar. It was only the amount I had to direct that had increased.
So, whether you are planning to stay on the conventional path or you want to create your own, I suggest you start taking ownership of your day and, with it, your life. If you do that, in the former case, you won't feel like a slave or a prisoner, and in the latter, you won't be crushed by too much freedom and responsibility.
I hope that ending it with this short lesson acts as a good teaser for the full list of lessons I have learned on my journey so far.
Thank you for reading.
P.S.
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Would rather build a life that excites me and challenges me. One where I could be one with myself and others. IĀ“m proud of the decision you took friend. Choosing to seek and lead instead of focusing on comfort. Valuable lessons to be preserved.
Thank you David for speaking about this! I too have gone through a very similar journey and experienced the same lesson. Unfortunately, unlike you I wasn't a disciplined, high agency individual like yourself, as you put it, but the lesson itself did not escape me. I have since then decided to return to "the prison", but I still hope I will muster up the energy and whatever else it takes to consistently design my own days and own them, as one should. It's a shame more people, particularly from our background, never become aware of this.