There was a time I thought healing meant understanding everything about myself. That if I could just decode my past, name every emotion, trace every scar, I would find some stable version of “me” one that made sense of everything.
Growing up in a difficult home, I craved clarity. I wanted to know why I felt so much, why I struggled with connection, why silence both soothed and terrified me. After surviving a nearly fatal accident, I carried another layer of urgency. Life felt fragile. I thought I had to figure everything out before time ran out.
Later, I changed countries, changed disciplines from engineering in Kolkata to systems thinking in Oklahoma. I started studying control systems and fuzzy logic, and somewhere along the way, I applied those same logics inward. I treated myself like a machine to be decoded, managed, and controlled. My desire for answers turned into a kind of performance. If I could explain my pain well enough, maybe I would finally outgrow it.
But explanation is not freedom.
I met people whose lives were built around expectations I did not share. They came from family systems that looked strong from the outside, but when you lived among them, they required submission. I was expected to adapt, to accept certain rules because I was a single girl living alone. But I had already lived through control. I did not come this far to repeat the same story.
Over time, I began to realize that trying to fully understand myself had become another trap. I was spending so much energy analyzing my behaviors, my past, my wounds but not really living. It was around this time I came across a line of thought that changed something in me.
Slavoj Žižek, a philosopher who uses humour to make his points and is all over the place, often critiques modern self-help culture, saying that this obsession with “finding your true self” is one of the most dangerous illusions. According to him, there is no fully coherent self to be found. Our desires are unstable. Our identities are shaped by forces larger than us: culture, ideology, and the past. And the more we try to pin ourselves down, the more trapped we become in a loop of overthinking.
That resonated with me. Because I had been living in that loop. Wanting answers to protect myself from further harm. Wanting an identity I could defend. But I was missing the point.
Growth is not about knowing everything. It is about learning to live with uncertainty.
Now, I try to live more simply. I find meaning in the work I do, but I don’t ask it to define me. I enjoy learning from my friends not because I need them to complete me, but because good relationships are about mutual becoming, not control. I read, I cook, I take walks. I write not to explain myself, but to feel more real. I let my hobbies hold me on days when words fall short.
We are told to find ourselves, but maybe it is okay to just be unfinished, unclear, and in motion. Maybe freedom begins not with discovery, but with surrender.
“You don’t have to see the whole path. You just have to take the next step.”
Anonymous (but maybe every free spirit ever)
