The Freedom to Choose, The Freedom to Become

By Liz Picardal • November 20, 2025

There comes a season in every person’s life

when the heart stands at the center of many possibilities

not because it is uncertain,

but because it is alive.

Desire is rarely singular.

Curiosity is not betrayal.

And the soul often seeks to taste the world

before it understands what it truly wants to hold.

Many people cross paths with someone in that season

a moment where a heart flickers

toward many doors at once.

Some doors glow with excitement,

some with comfort,

some with mystery,

some with temptation that feels like a spark in the dark.

From the outside, you can see it:

the hesitation in their spirit,

the pull in multiple directions,

the longing to explore what might be waiting

just beyond the familiar.

And in witnessing this again and again in life

in stories shared,

in human nature observed,

in the quiet patterns we all eventually recognize

one truth becomes unmistakably clear:

Clarity does not rise in captivity.

It rises in freedom.

Attempts to hold, to persuade, to guide,

to convince someone to stay

before they understand themselves

only tightens what was meant to breathe.

People must walk toward what calls them,

even if the calling is brief,

intense,

mistaken,

or unfulfilling.

Only by touching what they desire

do they learn the difference between curiosity and connection.

Only by tasting what tempts them

do they understand whether it nourishes or empties them.

Only by wandering

do they learn what it means to return

or why they don’t.

So life teaches this gentle discipline:

to allow people the freedom of their own path.

No convincing.

No competing.

No confining.

No asking anyone to choose another

before they have chosen themselves.

Because whatever grows through pressure

cannot survive through time.

Let them wander.

Let them compare.

Let them experience sweetness, emptiness, excitement, chaos.

Their lessons are theirs

not ours to prevent,

not ours to absorb.

If they walk toward light,

they learn possibility.

If they walk toward illusions,

they learn discernment.

If they walk toward noise,

they learn exhaustion.

If they walk toward stillness,

they learn truth.

And if one day their wandering brings them back,

it will be because their soul circled back

after tasting everything it once questioned

not out of fear,

not out of loneliness,

not out of convenience,

but out of clarity.

And if they do not return,

then they were simply meant to grow elsewhere

in a story not written for you to carry.

Your role is not to guide their choices,

or soften their consequences,

or rescue them from lessons

the universe crafted specifically for them.

Your role is to honor your own path

while allowing others the dignity of theirs.

Because you, too, are choosing

choosing your peace,

your boundaries,

your alignment,

your self-respect,

your growth.

And in the quiet agreement between two free souls,

a higher truth appears:

No one loses when choices are made honestly.

Only illusions do.

And what remains after illusions fall

is what was always meant to stay.

So let them walk.

Let them learn.

Let them discover themselves

through the doors they follow

and the doors they close.

And walk your own path with grace

not waiting,

not shrinking,

not competing,

simply becoming.

Because what is yours

will never require force.

And what is not

will never feel like home.

Freedom is not the absence of love.

Freedom is the soil where real love learns how to bloom.