THE LIFE YOU WERE TOLD TO WANT
A Two-Part Story About Freedom, Significance and Identity
Sometimes the life you desperately want to escape is not the real prison.
“We are inherently flawed,” said the man on the pulpit.
George opened one eye. Then the other. He sat at the back of a church near his home, wondering whether the preacher was speaking about humanity at large or had somehow received George’s file that morning.
If it was the latter, George thought, the man was understating the situation. George had been through a very hard time. Peace had disappeared from his life so completely that he suspected it had changed its number.
The previous night had involved too much alcohol, too little sleep, and several decisions that probably made more sense at midnight than they did now. Most Sundays were fairly predictable. Watch a movie. Recover from Saturday. Meet the boys later. Have a few drinks. Promise himself that next weekend would be different.
Repeat.
Church had never played a prominent role in this system. In fact, this particular church had irritated him for weeks because, for reasons known only to God and the sound engineer, it had never respected the neighborhood’s noise limits. George had complained. Other neighbors had complained. People had spoken to the relevant authorities.
Nothing had happened.
And now, in one of life’s small jokes, George sat inside the very noise he had been trying to shut down. Something had drawn him there. He couldn’t explain it. He only knew that something had to give.
The Life That Looked Successful
From the outside, George had done well. Very well. He had made millions in his twenties, built a successful business, bought property, and supported his family. He had done what a successful African man is often expected to do. Provide. And then provide some more. And when everyone became accustomed to that level of provision, apparently there was an advanced course called “Provide Without Complaining.”
George had spent most of his adult life trying to become someone. Someone respected. Someone valuable. Someone his family could be proud of. Someone a woman would love. Someone his children would admire. Yet the more he achieved, the stranger life grew.
When he bought a house for his father and siblings, the requests didn’t stop. They grew. Somewhere along the way, generosity had quietly been promoted to an obligation. He began to feel that people did not necessarily want George.
They wanted what George could do for them. His relationship wasn’t much better. The woman in his life wanted more. A better neighborhood. More money. A bigger lifestyle. She compared them to friends who seemed to be doing better.
And George began to discover something dangerous about comparison: there is always someone with a bigger house, a better car, a more expensive vacation, or a shinier marriage on Instagram. And if you build your identity around keeping up, there is no finish line — only another invoice.
Then the twins arrived — a boy and a girl. For a moment, they sobered him. He loved looking at them. But their arrival also forced him to confront a thought he had been avoiding.
Whose life was he actually living?
He was constantly tired. The migraines had become frequent. Work demanded his attention. Family demanded his attention. His relationship demanded his attention. Society seemed to have produced a checklist and handed it to him without asking whether he wanted the job.
Make money. Buy a house. Buy a better house. Get a family. Provide. Upgrade the car. Work harder. Take a holiday so you can recover enough to return to the work that exhausted you. Repeat.
It felt like a treadmill. The problem with a treadmill is that you can run very fast without actually going anywhere.
The Six Lions Eating Grass
One weekend, George found himself at one of those family gatherings he had come to dislike. The children were bouncing around in a bouncing castle, occasionally pausing to throw impressive hissy fits.
The women were talking. The men slowly drifted toward one corner. Six men. George looked around. None of them really knew one another. Their women were friends, so the men had been grouped together like luggage from connecting flights.
There was polite conversation. Football. Cars. Work. Politics. Then silence. George looked at the men. Then he looked at himself. A strange thought entered his mind. They reminded him of lions who had somehow been convinced that grass was part of a balanced diet.
Nobody was roaring. Nobody seemed particularly alive. Everyone was responsible. Everyone was respectable. Everyone looked tired. George felt something animalistic rise inside him. Not violence. Not anger. Something else. A desire to reclaim himself.
He didn’t roar that afternoon. That would have made the children’s party unnecessarily complicated. But while driving home, he made a decision. I am done.
The Escape
The following morning, George packed a bag. Not everything. Just what he considered important. He walked past the Range Rover. His partner had always insisted on driving it anyway. He took the Toyota station wagon. Good enough.
He drove through the gates of their pristine compound, where every house seemed designed by someone terrified of individuality. Same walls. Same lawns. Same gates. Same aspirations.
As he drove away, a smile tugged at his stressed forehead. “Finally,” he whispered. “I can be free.” For a few days, he believed it. No questions. No nagging. No obligations. No family events. No pretending. He could wake up when he wanted. Eat what he wanted. Go where he wanted.
He was free.
George discovered that freedom had a phone. And it rang constantly. His family called. His partner called. The children called. Even the six random men from the party called. People wanted explanations.
Where are you?
What are you doing?
When are you coming back?
What will people say?
That last question fascinated him.
What will people say?
George began wondering how many major life decisions had been made out of fear of a committee that had never actually convened.
People.
Who were these people?
Where did they gather?
Did they have minutes?
Was there a WhatsApp group?
And why did they have so much authority over everybody’s lives?
For the first time, George didn’t care. At least he thought he didn’t. Then his old friends found him, and the drinking began. Properly. At first, it was a celebration.
Freedom! No responsibilities! No schedules! No expectations! Another round!
But days became weeks, and weeks became months. And somewhere between the bottles, late nights, and blurred mornings, George began to lose track of time. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his children. He barely spoke to his family.
He had sold his business a year earlier and had enough money, give or take, to never work again. He had achieved what millions of people dream of. No boss. No alarm clock. No financial pressure. No office politics. No Monday morning meeting. And yet, he was miserable.
That disturbed him. If money gave you freedom and he had money, why didn’t he feel free?
When Freedom Becomes Another Prison
Eventually, George had to admit something. He had left the compound, but the compound had not left him. He had rejected responsibility, yet he had not found purpose. He had escaped people’s expectations, but he still didn’t know what he expected of himself.
He had freedom from something, but no freedom for anything. There is a difference. Sometimes we call something freedom simply because nobody can tell us what to do. But being able to do anything is not the same as knowing what is worth doing.
George could drink whenever he wanted. Sleep whenever he wanted. Travel whenever he wanted. Buy whatever he wanted. And slowly, the freedom he had celebrated turned into emptiness. Which is how, after another drunken night, George found himself sitting in the back of a noisy church he had spent months complaining about.
The preacher was talking about Job, a man who had lost almost everything. George chuckled. He couldn’t relate. He had spent most of his life ensuring he would never be that man. His possessions were evidence. His success was evidence. His money was evidence. His business had been evidence. Evidence that he mattered. Evidence that he had escaped the helpless boy he once was.
As a child, George had watched his father slip into drunken stupors. He had learned early that if something needed fixing, someone had to do it. Often, that someone was him.
Maybe that was where it began. Work hard. Be useful. Make money. Become indispensable. Then perhaps people will love you. Perhaps they will respect you. Perhaps they will finally see you.
George looked down at his hands. Hands that had built a business. Hands that had signed contracts. Hands that had made money. Hands that had spent years trying to prove that the person attached to them mattered.
Then the preacher asked a question.
“What kind of person would you be if you lost everything like Job?”
George smirked.
For one, I would probably kill myself, he thought darkly. Because without the money, without the business, without the houses, without the image, without being the provider, without being the man everybody needed, what exactly was left?
George suddenly stopped smiling. The answer that came to him was terrifying.
Nothing.
He had spent years becoming successful. But perhaps he had never discovered who George was. Then another question entered his mind. A dangerous question. A question that would eventually change his relationship with money, his children, work, freedom, and himself.
George looked down at his hands again and thought:
What if I tried to become somebody I actually enjoy being?
That afternoon, George walked out of the church with an idea. It sounded ridiculous. It might destroy the life he had built, or it might be the first truly free decision he had ever made.
To be continued.
PART TWO — WHO ARE YOU WHEN NOBODY IS APPLAUDING?
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