A Journey To My Mind

By Gaby Kokas

I always thought my life was somewhere else. I grew up in a small village, the kind of place where the world feels far away. Everything was quiet, predictable… limited. While others seemed content, I felt something different inside me, a restlessness I couldn’t explain. It was as if the horizon was calling me, whispering that life had to be bigger than this. I wasn’t unhappy in a way I could easily describe. I could smile, I could function, I could even say I was “fine.” But deep inside, I was not at peace. There was always a feeling that something was missing, that I was meant to be somewhere else, someone else. I began to believe that happiness was waiting for me, just not here.

I thought, if I can just leave this place, I’ll finally feel free. So, I did, I traveled far, farther than I had ever imagined as a child. Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia; places that once felt like dreams became real beneath my feet. I saw new cultures, new faces, new ways of living. Everything was different, everything was exciting. For a moment, it felt like I had done it, I had escaped. But slowly, quietly, something uncomfortable revealed itself. No matter where I went, I was still there.

The same thoughts followed me onto every plane, into every city, across every ocean. My fears didn’t disappear in a new country. My sadness didn’t dissolve in the tropical air. My mind, with all its weight, traveled with me. I had changed my surroundings, but I hadn’t changed myself. I felt even the entire Earth was too small for me. Should I then go to the Moon? ☺ And for the first time, I began to understand something I had been running from my whole life: There is no place you can go to escape your own mind. That realization was not freeing, it was heavy. Because if the problem wasn’t the village, the country where I was born or the distance, or the lack of opportunities; then it had to be something within me. That meant I couldn’t run anymore.

That was the moment my real journey began. Not on a map. Not on a plane. But inward. I started to sit with myself in a way I never had before. To observe through meditation, my thoughts, my memories, my patterns. To see how much I had been holding onto: old emotions, quiet pain, invisible limitations that shaped how I saw the world. I realized that all along, I wasn’t searching for a new place. I was searching for peace. And peace is not something you find in a different country. It’s something you uncover within yourself.

The places I once dreamed of; they were never really about geography. They were symbols. Symbols of freedom, of possibility, of a life without the weight I carried inside. I thought I needed to physically arrive somewhere else to feel that. But now I see, I don’t need to board a plane to be free. I need to let go of the limitations that I created and the predictability that I imagined about life.

I needed to cleanse my mind. To release what no longer serves me. To see clearly, without the filters of fear and past experiences. To return to something deeper, something more true. Because when the mind changes, everything changes. Now, I can be in the same place I once wanted to escape and feel something completely different. Not trapped, but present. Not restless, but calm. Not searching, but simply being. The journey didn’t end when I came back. It finally began.