I remember the scene quite clearly. It played out in the vast waiting hall of Shanghai’s Pudong Airport, one of the busiest in the world. I had arrived early and was sitting quietly amid the perpetual hustle and bustle, reading, my backpack resting beside me on the polished floor.
Suddenly—noisily—a small family burst onto the scene. The parents must have been about my age, maybe a little older. Australian, judging by their accents. The children—a baby in a stroller, barely a year old, and a toddler stumbling behind, pushing a toy trolley—were agitated, excited, cranky, and loud. The parents looked utterly exhausted, dragging themselves and their oversized luggage across the shiny tiles. As they tried, with limited success, to squeeze two strollers, multiple suitcases, an array of toys, and themselves into the cramped seating area opposite me, I glanced up briefly from my book.
For a moment, I locked eyes with the father. What I saw, to my surprise, was not frustration or anger, but more a desperate mix of helplessness, apology, and quiet resignation. Happiness, I thought to myself, looks different. Wordlessly, I picked up my backpack—7 kg, hand luggage—and stood up to leave. In retrospect, I think it was at that moment that something crystallized in my mind: That’s never going to be me, I thought.
Since that trip to China in 2017, I’ve traveled extensively in Asia and elsewhere. Most of the time with a single backpack. Often alone. A peculiar feeling stems from the knowledge that every personal item I might need in the foreseeable future fits into that one backpack—always ready to be picked up at a moment’s notice. It comes with a tinge of dread: What if I lose something important? What if I need something I didn’t bring? But on the flip side, it gives rise to an unbeatable sense of freedom. Unmoored from the myriad of possessions I call “mine” back home, all the things which require my care and attention, and that, ultimately tie and bind an otherwise “free” person to a specific point in space and time. That backpack has become a constant reminder of what freedom means to me. It was the only thing I had with me on my extensive tour of India; on an unforgettable motorcycle taxi ride across Bangkok in the pouring rain; when I sprinted through Da Nang railway station, jumped a turnstile, and scrambled on board the train to Saigon that was just about to depart; and on many, many other amazing (and sometimes frightening!) occasions.
Political philosophers distinguish between two kinds of freedom: freedom from and freedom to. This distinction, famously articulated by Isaiah Berlin in his seminal 1958 lecture Two Concepts of Liberty, continues to resonate, although in a limited sense. “Freedom from,” of course, refers to the absence of external constraints—freedom from coercion, oppression, poverty, or violence; these in turn unlock the “freedom to” act according to one’s own will, to pursue self-chosen goals, to live a personally meaningful life. But narrowing one’s view to this dichotomy of external causes of oppression versus individual striving misses something subtler about the human condition.
While both kinds of freedom are enshrined in the basic laws of modern democracies, many of us, in fact, live our daily lives as if under authoritarian rule. We follow obligations, social conventions, or act out unconscious scripts—without ever stopping to question them. And most of those constraints, when examined closely, turn out to be self-imposed. How often do we pause and reflect “Do I actually have to do this?”
Hauling 30+ kilograms of luggage through an international airport isn’t a necessity. It’s a choice. A constitutional “freedom from” forced labor doesn’t protect us from the self-inflicted compulsion to bring our entire wardrobe on vacation. In fact, that family’s struggle—at that precise moment—was a direct expression of their “freedom to” make decisions according to their own values. The Buddhists call this karma: the inevitable unfolding of cause and consequence. Stripped of metaphysics, it’s just practical wisdom. Our past choices shape our present burdens—or our lack thereof which you can call “freedom.” The choice, to give another example, of purchasing a $1,000+ phone is a surefire source of countless anxieties: that this precious possession might get lost, or stolen, or the screen cracked. Not buying the phone in the first place thus annihilates the root of a lot of unnecessary suffering.
The other side of this coin is best captured in the writings of the Stoics. When Epictetus, once a slave in first-century Rome, speaks of “inner freedom” in light of external oppression, he means exactly that: no matter what hardship is inflicted—torture, exile, death—how we respond inwardly is always our own choice. “I must die,” he writes, “but must I die bawling?” The Buddhists have a similar saying: “Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.”
Over time, I began to see that many of the obligations governing my own life choices in the broadest sense were, in fact, just social constructs. And that the pursuit of them caused me more suffering than joy. Why, for instance, would I need to earn a particular income or hold a certain job title? Not because it’s necessary for a happy, healthy, fulfilling life—not for me. Reflecting deeply on this, I had to admit that my striving for a higher bank balance year after year was more a result of an unhealthy attachment to my own ego than of a genuine pursuit of happiness. “If your peers make that much money," the little green goblin called “envy” kept telling me, “you deserve too!” But if the actual goal was just a lifestyle filled with pleasurable and meaningful experiences, tailored to my own preferences, then I was pretty lucky—because it turns out that such a life, for me, is surprisingly affordable. To put it differently: I haven’t discovered a way to turn “more income” into “more happiness” by purchasing more stuff. What I have found though is a way to turn “more free time” into “more happiness.”
The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus nailed this over two thousand years ago: “If you wish to be rich, do not add to your money, but subtract from your desires.”
Obviously, like any sentient creature, what we seek at a basic level is more pleasure and less pain. But the subtler point is that what counts as “pleasure” is subjective—and, crucially, malleable. Take my current sabbatical, for example: I still get up at 4:00am every morning and go for a run, or a swim, or a bike ride. I meditate, I read, I write. I even build quirky little Apps and do countless things others might still call “work.” Convention suggests I should instead be living a life of idle leisure—sleeping, eating, sunbathing, relaxing. But truthfully, I derive far more satisfaction from attending to mental challenges. My mind seems wired to seek out problems to solve, projects to build, difficulties to overcome. Psychologists describe this as a high “need for cognition”. I guess I’m lucky that, for me, building software, grappling with abstract ideas, or writing pieces like this one is far more rewarding than idle relaxation or financially expensive hobbies.
Life, as it turns out, is short. In the days since I started drafting this, a lunatic has shot ten innocent schoolchildren and their teacher in Graz; a new war has erupted in the Middle East; a passenger jet has crash-landed in Gujarat, India, killing 240 people and injuring many more.
In light of this, the “freedom to” alter one’s experience and actively shape one’s life in alignment with one’s values and temperament is not merely an opportunity; it’s also a responsibility. As the existentialists, such as Jean-Paul Sartre, would remind us, it is a burden of freedom. In Being and Nothingness, Sartre argued that we are “condemned to be free” because with freedom comes radical responsibility for the shape our lives take. No one else can live our lives for us. Each of us must invest time and effort examining what truly matters to us, what gives us joy, and why. Was that family at the Shanghai airport genuinely happy? If so, I applaud them. But what if they were merely acting out a script, shaped by culture and society, that they had never thought to challenge?
When I, at that time, supposed that “freedom” for me would mean nothing more than a backpack and a plane ticket, I had also had not thought deeply enough about what that would entail. However, this initial idea sparked more and deeper reflection, as well as a process of constantly evaluating and adjusting my life choices. Of course, these choices can be wrong and can change again. However, there’s also “freedom” inherent in that openness to change and joy in the process of careful examination.