My Ambition Is to Be Finally Free
Every once in a while, I have a dream that steers my life in a different direction. A few months ago, I wrote about one of them. I had it in Geneva — way back when I was living alone in a new country for the first time.
Since then, I’ve had a handful of dreams that have played a similar role. They come unexpectedly. If anything, they never come when they’re seemingly most needed. It may take days or weeks before they manifest themselves. Yet, when they do, it makes sense.
I had one of those dreams last Sunday, and It came at the right time. It also shined a bright light on something I’ve been repeating to myself these days. Notably, in order to experience the ecstasy of freedom, over-relying on habits, people, or past experiences may be the most pervasive inhibitor.
It was gray outside. Almost like a stereotypical London morning in mid-November, when it’s hard to see a hundred feet ahead because of the haze and rain. My family and I were on vacation in the Alps. Although I didn’t know exactly where we were, I knew it offered some of the best skiing on the planet. The mountain was beautiful. It had endless slopes and trails that were devoid of people. They were there to be taken advantage of. On face value, it was paradise for a family vacation. It felt like the good old days — when we’d get up at five o’clock in the morning to ski at Mount Sutton, the closest ski resort to my country house in Quebec.
But the generalized grayness was hard to ignore. It shaved the blissful edge from the experience. In fact, it made the whole experience a little numbing. An inescapable dullness against which I was fighting. As the day went by, it actually became hardly bearable. It got to me. I couldn’t be there anymore — I had to leave.
I decided to go ski by myself, in hope that it would remedy the frustration I was feeling. “How can I make this day better?” I told myself, “Isn’t this supposed to be paradise? Why am I not the happiest person on the planet right now?”
After going down an easy trail, I arrive at some sort of a train station. Not the kind of elaborate and cosmopolitan train station that one would encounter in a large city. It felt like a cross between a train station and a neighborhood subway stop, but in the middle of a mountain range in the Alps. I decided I’d take it, if only for a little adventure.
I hopped on the train with my skiing equipment. When the doors shut behind me, I started feeling somewhat anxious. “How the hell am I supposed to come back to the mountain?” I asked myself. I looked around me to get a general impression of where I was heading. My eyes fell upon a map. I started memorizing it, so I could get a sense of how I’d come back to the resort and my family. Once I became a little more familiar with it, I started feeling better. It gave me the impression that my adventure was going to be temporary.
As soon as I looked outside — through the windows of the train — I was shocked by how the surroundings had changed. The train was going at a decent speed — perhaps a little faster than a typical city subway, but not much faster. It hadn’t taken us out of the mountain range. At least, that’s what I thought.
I had faint recognitions of where we were. It resembled the area where my country house in Quebec is situated, as though we had traveled from the Alps to Quebec. After passing through it, the views became progressively more cosmopolitan. And then I started recognizing some of Montreal’s famous landmarks: Mount Royal, the Farine Five Roses building, the Jacques Cartier bridge. I had arrived in Montreal — from the Alps, through my country house’s area, to my birthplace and hometown.
I got out of the train, and started walking downtown. The grayness had disappeared. Everything felt completely normal.
I realized that what I needed all along was to do my own thing — go on a journey, just by myself. All for one purpose: to be back home, back to where it all started. Most importantly, I was back in my own space and identity, devoid of all constraints and handicaps. I was finally free.
