After 10 days staying in France, no work done, a lot of cheese eaten, great moments shared with people I love, cold weather, eating enough croissants for a year, and seeing my weight going way beyond 80kg, I am FINALLY going back to Bali.

During the check-in, the Qatar’s flight attendant asked me: “When are you coming back, sir?”

I replied, smiling: “This is my way back.”

When I arrived in France, I jokingly said that at least this trip would remind me why I left in the first place.

Now I can confirm this, not jokingly.

I tried to approach this journey it with naive eyes, seeing things as they are, beyond my own filter of “I don’t wanna be here anyway.”

And I enjoyed a lot of things, especially the city of Bordeaux.

This is definitely the place where I want to be when I’m going back.

Because of how it looks, because the vibe is a quite laid back and because it’s human sized.

One of the main weird things I felt while being in France, is this opposite correlation between freedom and security.

It felt incredibly safer that what I remembered.

But not safe in a way that made me feel great. Safe in a way that made it feel formatted, predictable, and a bit boring.

One of my friend told me: “We got to a point that what we call freedom here, is now the sum of our permissions.”

Which means that you are only free to do what’s specifically allowed. And all the rest is forbidden.

And what’s neither allowed nor forbidden… is suspicious.

I realized how incredibly privileged people are there.

People have access to free healthcare, free school/university and some sort of basic income if you don’t have a job.

Yet for months people are going in the streets to protest and get more from the government.

I tried not to take part, not to judge or think about who was right or wrong.

Because it’s a more complex issue than being right or wrong, and I know I am not equipped to fully understand the whole situation.

However, I am fully equipped to know that this is definitely the kind of environment I reject, and being there confirmed one more time that my choice to keep living in Indonesia was the right one for me, at this stage of my life.

I believe that one of the greatest freedom we can have is the one to choose our pains.

Because everything comes at a cost.

And living in Indonesia brings different pain points.

But what matters is to be aware of them, and to accept them as the price to pay to lead a certain life.

It’s all about choices and consequences.

When we start to understand this concept, we understand that we are somehow less “stuck” that what we think.

We just make choices every day that lead to a set of consequences.

If you want to change the consequences, you need to change the choices.