[Originally sent out in the nesletter etc. Buy the print.]
I remember being a young, poor, and scared student, having a terrifying year living in London.
I remember one morning, being caught in some sort of crushing existential dread as I rode the Underground to school. Thinking how I would be crushed by the harsh environment around me.
Thinking about how my happy little undergraduate life was about to end and that I’d just end up a little stain on the urban tarmac.
I had nothing, really. No job to look forward to, no money of my own. In a town twice as expensive as New York.
I had never known the feeling of having “Nothing” before then. It was scary. REALLY scary.
Right when the existentialism was starting to crescendo as I stepped off the train, I suddenly snapped out of it.
I realized that right then and there, everything I needed I already had.
Between my ears. Inside my mind.
That’s where it was. That’s where the treasure was buried.
My mind was a free agent. It didn’t belong to anybody else..
As long as my mind remained free, then I would be free. All the external stuff was just temporary nonsense I’d soon get over.
I emerged back onto the street, back into the sunshine, a very happy young man; the happiest I had been in a while.
