Episode 2: The Unbearable Weight of Freedom

Turning away from my old skin, fields are spread across the eye, endless roads and possibilities for me to take, but where will they lead me? New places, I envision, different people, I imagine. My heart is racing. I think and think, and overthink, and flowing are my emotions, until they overflow. I freeze, I look back. Why? Why do I only wish to crawl back in…

Kalispera, Good evening, Buenas Tardes, Dobry Wieczór.

Welcome back to the “After the Dragon” podcast. Nice to have you here!

As a reminder, this is a non-predetermined journey of navigating life changes, after I—your host and patient zero, Michalis—started on my path toward the unknown. Leaving an old self behind, with no clear destination in mind.

Why share this journey?

Because there are others out there who are also on their paths toward growth and discovery.

Because, even if anything remotely resonates with you, in a way that makes you reflect on yourself, this podcast has achieved its goal.

So, let’s continue.

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A death, it was indeed, but not a biological or terminal. Rather, a reincarnation, with me choosing what I may become.

That's when I felt it. I felt...

Freedom.

What do you think of freedom?

A question that I never thought of before, this is.

What fool would be against such a soundly loving concept?

And yet, how many times do we deny it?

Bringing something from the first episode, the camels would do so, every time they face freedom. Their humps act as anchors, as excuses, as “musts” and “have to’s”.

So, how about you?

When life serves you an opportunity for change, how did you handle it?

Did you run away from it? Or did you stay here, and fight for a better future?

Myself?

While packing, to leave camel-packed Thessaloniki and spend some time in Athens, heartbroken and defeated and desperately needing a change, I stumbled upon a relic of my past.

There was a dear person once in my life. A warm love story, but, not all love stories are to last. We played our part in each other’s lives and departed in opposite directions.

We haven’t interacted ever since. Strangers, we became once more, but with memories, fading in the background, inside a brain’s dusty neuron drawer they resided.

Yet, when I started looking around that physical drawer, that is when I came across it; a letter, lengthy as it was, 24 pages long, from her. 24 pages! Coming to think of the length itself, I appreciate how much thought she had to give to us.

Back then, I read that letter. Understood it as a labyrinth of blames, fantasies, and wishes. Overwhelmed by emotions, I buried it along with everything else and carried on with my illusions.

So, in my second interaction, detached from all that ego, a second chance I gave it. The same words, blames, and wishes, a pinball shot inside of me that now sounded different, entering my brain walls, but hitting another, newly built level of the machine, that my recent experiences bestowed upon me.

Like I was in a video game, this felt like a checkpoint. One that brought me back in time, to relive with different, unlocked perspectives. Seeing the themes I have somehow corrected from that period. And the others I held dear.

The letter finished with a suggestion; one that I remember that I scoffed off as very insulting at that time, a book named "Power of Self-Dependence", by Jorge Bucay.

Needless to say - I never gave that book a go ever before.

But, as I was departing for Athens, I grabbed a copy, and my companion, it became, towards that journey.

Reading it, for me, was a struggle. It felt as if Bucay himself leaped from the pages to slap my cheeks as I was strolling through the Athenian streets.

Because a mind stuck perceives to process everything through its dirty, narrow lenses.

Many of its lines triggered me. Revamping my past mistakes from Poland, from Greece, from everywhere.

A suffering that climaxed, right in the final chapters. When he reached the concept of freedom.

As a psychotherapist himself, Bucay got to experience so many fancy ways of self-imprisonment.

Can you think of some of them, for you?

How about the people you attach yourself to?

How about values? Values that are not even yours, but gifted to you? A gift of a white elephant?

Let's not joke to ourselves; we are not perfect. And this is a safe zone to express that.

No, what we often do is that we shackle ourselves. We can become the prisoners of our own being. Willingly enslaved to others, to ideas, to emotions.

Our self-imposed limitations.

And you may think, of course, that freedom may not be absolute. After all, we live in a society, with its norms and customs, its culture, and social creatures we are wired to remain, and such a fact we can't escape.

He knows; his case lies in a matter of choice.

As described in the book, all over the continuum of human thought, there are examples of people who chose freely, versus the countless others that have not. An Argentinian himself, he gives examples of the 20th century rebels against the junta. Most citizens did not choose to fight – at least as actively. The ones who did, paid the price and suffered, and got brutalized, or even worse, got murdered.

We are not here to judge if they were correct or wrong in doing so. We are here to understand that it was their choice. They were free to choose to fight for their beliefs.

Freedom is, after all, a responsibility. Of knowing that we're free to act as we please; yet, without avoiding the consequences.

With great freedom, comes great responsibility, Spiderman had it first, kudos to Stan Lee.

Of course, both he and Bucay are far from a pioneer in this. They step onto the shoulders of existentialism giants with such concepts. Yet, it's intriguing to do so from the standpoint of psychology.

You may remember, from the last episode, about determinism; to as we are but a mosaic of all the various forces of our world.

Existentialism is the opposite. It's all about that freedom, that is our responsibility to shape who we are.

And both existentialists and existential philosophers know - yes, there are differences apparently, but let’s stick to ideas instead of labels - that we humans have to face such reality at some point.

As Sartre, one of the most important philosophers of the kind, said: “Humans are condemned to be free”.

Still, we try to avoid such freedom. And Sartre himself had developed a term on how we do so: the concept of bad faith.

Bad faith is when we cling to false beliefs or roles—things we know deep down aren’t true—to avoid confronting reality.

Such can take the shape of many; a horrible relationship. A consuming career. A set of foreign values.

Our limitations.

That we, deep down, know they are wrong.

Yet, it's what we know.

It is familiar.

It is our comfort.

For how long? How long until you burst?

You can't hide from this responsibility forever.

I can't hide from this responsibility forever.

I can’t crawl back to my old, broken skin.

Life provided me with all the struggles I needed to understand that my bad faith was lying back there. Something forced me to kill it. Or, maybe, the bubble burst. It was time.

It is gone. It is but diseased.

And I cannot return to it.

Frustration, I felt for weeks!

For my emotions.

For my weakness.

For my humanity.

That such bad faith ruled over me for years.

Might be, but I come to realize now. A fool, I may have been, a failure I can remain. I can be all these, and yet, I can now be more alive to understand my freedom in shaping my future path.

A late bloomer can still blossom. Why despair?

Another public vow to make; is to never take away this freedom from myself.

And I wish you may never do so, too. That, at some point, you face yourself in the mirror. And see you deserve so much more from this absurdly beautiful world.

Thank you for reminding me, Bucay. Of course, thank you, Sophia; I only wished I had listened to some of your wisdom back then.

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Appreciate you reaching the end of the second episode; these are two episodes more than I even believed in making!

One note; many of the ideas analyzed here, such as bad faith, existentialism vs determinism, or Sartre’s work, are extremely oversimplified and underexplained.

And I know; that is the point; this is merely a starting point for you to dive in. Yet, I suggest listening to Philosophize This podcasts’ on Sastre and Camus, as well as investing some time into Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. And, of course, Bucay’s book on the Power of Self-Dependence is a great read as well.

Liked this show? Then leave a like, a review, or recommend it to your loved ones - anything like this helps After the Dragon massively.

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The holiday season is, now upon us. Enjoy Christmas, New Years, take care, and work on yourself with consistency; don’t just wait for the new year’s resolution. That work will pay off.

Next episode is Tuesday the 9th, 2025 - let's give us both some time. So; until the next one - year and episode. Goodbye.