From Toward Onward

The Illusion of Free Will

I don’t know at what age it was exactly when I first started to feel it.

That sense that my life wasn’t mine—in the quiet way that just keeps building over time. The slow understanding that the choices I made never really felt like choices at all.

They were paths laid out for me. Expectations that had already taken shape before I even had the words to question them.

And maybe that should have felt safe—having a road, knowing the direction, being told who I was supposed to be.

But it didn’t.

Because everything people wanted me to be, I felt I had been made opposite of that.

It wasn’t rebellion. It wasn’t even resistance. It was just... a fact. A knowing.

If I followed the road they gave me, I would disappear.

So I walked my own.

Not because I knew where I was going.

But because I couldn’t do anything else.

I had some grand vision for something—something beyond myself. Something that could explain why I never seemed to fit.

Because if I wasn’t in control of my life—if I wasn’t choosing this—then who was?

And so I was kept in motion.

I kept building.

I kept searching.

And still, I couldn't feel whole.

By 40, I had done everything I was supposed to do.

Built things. Lost things. Loved. Fought for meaning. Searched for truth.

And yet, the same realisation always found me.

Undeniable. Unrelenting.

I have no choice.

Tomorrow, I would have to continue. The next day, the same. And the day after that.

Not because I wanted to.

Not because I believed in what I was doing.

But because stopping wasn’t an option.

No one stops.

That’s the rule.

We keep going. We keep pushing. We keep waking up and performing the life we built, because what else is there?

And I hated it.

I hated myself.

I hated hearing the words thank you when I performed a role.

Because that’s all I was—a role. A script. Something I had been doing.

And still, the world would applaud.

As if I were the one choosing any of it.

Then the world stopped.

Corona.

The momentum of everything—halted. The external noise, the constant demand to keep moving—silenced.

I was stopped!.

And in that pause, the fear came.

If I’m not moving, what am I?

If there’s nowhere to go, who am I?

For the first time, the question wasn’t drowned out by the weight of doing.

It was just there. Unanswered.

The mind doesn’t go quiet just because you tell it to.

It rushes in. Bargains. Negotiates.

It tells you stopping is the most dangerous thing of all.

But I had already lost everything.

And I had no idea who I was so that I could do something.

There was nothing left to argue with.

So I did the only thing I had never done before.

I sat in it.

I sat in the stillness of my own hopelessness.

I let the weight of my choices—or lack of them—press into me.

I let the reality of my prison settle—the prison of expectation.

Not to escape.

Not to force meaning where there was none.

Not to tell myself a new story about what it all meant or who I was supposed to be.

But to finally see the thing I had been running from all along.

To turn toward it.

Now, Here We Are

The illusion of free will.

The exhaustion of always moving.

The quiet, relentless weight of performing a life rather than living it.

That ache deep inside you that says:

I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up.

You know this feeling, don’t you?

Not in theory. Not as some abstract idea about life.

But in your bones.

You are tired.

Tired of loving too much, caring too much, giving too much to a world that never gives anything back.

Tired of investing in indefinite outcomes.

Tired of uncertainty.

Tired of grey.

And what you want most isn’t more effort.

It’s to rest.

But to let go feels like giving up, doesn’t it?

To be still feels like something is wrong.

But what if that isn’t true?

What if everything you’ve been waiting for is on the other side of not doing anything?

We all wait for miracles.

But we can't run from the choice that has always been ours.

I found my teacher in this period. And on the first pages of my notes are his words:

'Free will is from toward onwards' Dr Michael Laitman

And only from experience—only from stopping—did the illusion crumble.

Not bogging me down.

Not running me in circles.

But stopping me.

Sitting me in it long enough to face myself.

And from there—

Is your first true choice.

Shakespeare says it best—

'To be, or not to be. That is the question'

Bradley J Cleary