SANJAY SAYS

I Didn’t Want to Break Free, But it Happened Anyway

Exploring recent plot twists in my life story

Dorito angst created in DALL-E

One cold day this past winter, I found myself driving home from a stressful set of meetings at my money-losing restaurant in Toronto, an unopened bag of Doritos in the passenger seat of my car. The Doritos, surprisingly, remained unopened for the entire drive.

Because.

I was listening to an audiobook with a title so absurd it could be either complete nonsense or the key to life: Busting Loose from the Money Game by Robert Scheinfeld. I was only listening because a friend had recommended the book, claiming it was about quantum mechanics, not money.

I had never heard of Robert Scheinfeld. I initially assumed this was some sort of mid-2000s get-rich-quick PDF scam. And its style is indeed overly salesy. But the content was deeper than I expected.

The book didn’t teach me how to hack the stock market or manifest a Lamborghini with my chakras. It taught me something far more dangerous: that nothing meant anything.

More precisely, it suggested that I was not who I thought I was, the world wasn’t what it seemed, and that all of the problems in my life were staged by someone who was clearly having a bit of fun with the…