The quote on my wall
Intentional living starts with a simple but radical idea. Before I moved to Mexico, I lived in an apartment in Montreal. On one of the walls, in big letters, I had painted a quote:
If you do not like where you are, move. You are not a tree.
I painted it there on purpose. Not as decoration — as a reminder. For the days when the grey of winter felt permanent. For the moments when the life I was living felt like it belonged to someone else. For the version of me that needed to hear it most.
It worked.
We normalize what doesn’t fit
Here is something that happens slowly, almost invisibly: we get used to things.
A job that drains us becomes just the job. A city that never felt like home becomes where I live. A relationship that stopped growing becomes comfortable. A life that was never really chosen becomes just how things are.
We normalize. We adapt. We tell ourselves it’s fine, it’s not that bad, other people have it worse. And sometimes that’s wisdom. But sometimes — often — it’s just fear wearing the costume of acceptance.
The feeling that something is off doesn’t always announce itself loudly. Sometimes it’s just a quiet, persistent discomfort. A restlessness you can’t quite name. A sense that you are living slightly to the left of where you’re supposed to be.
That feeling is worth listening to.
Intentional living begins with noticing that feeling — and deciding it’s worth paying attention to.
The path that was chosen for us
We live in a world with a very clear script. Go to school. Get a degree. Find a stable job. Buy a place. Get married. Have children. Retire.
There is nothing wrong with that path — if it’s genuinely yours. If you chose it consciously, eyes open, because it reflects who you are and what you want. Then it’s a beautiful path.
But too often, we follow it because it’s what we’re supposed to do. Because it’s what our parents did, what our friends are doing, what society quietly rewards. We mistake familiarity for rightness. We confuse the absence of a better idea with the presence of the right one.
I’ve heard too many stories of people who did everything right — good grades, steady career, ticked every box — and felt completely empty inside. Not because they failed. But because the life they built was never really theirs to begin with.
Intentional living — taking conscious decisions for yourself is not selfish. It is one of the most important things you can do — for yourself, and for the people around you. A person living authentically is a person with something real to give.
I wrote about this in depth when I shared the story of how I traveled the world with only 14kg on my back — and what it taught me about living
We can only choose what we can see
My brother-in-law once told me that he wanted his daughters — my nieces — to spend time with me, their “different” aunty. He explained that he wants them to be truly free to choose the life they want. But if their only models fit into the conventional script, then they never really get to choose — the life chooses for them.
That stayed with me.
It reminded me of a moment from when I worked in Kuujjuaq, in a group home with Inuit youth. I asked one of the teenagers what she wanted to be when she grew up.
She said: cashier at the Northern store.
It hit me. Not because there is anything wrong with that — but because I understood instantly why she said it. Her Inuit role models were not teachers, or lawyers, or entrepreneurs, or artists. They were the people she saw every day, doing the jobs that existed in her world. Her sense of what was possible for her was built entirely from what she could see.
We are all like that teenager, in our own way.
The path we follow is shaped by the paths we’ve witnessed. The dreams we dare to have are limited by the dreams we’ve been shown. If everyone around you buys a house at 30, gets married, takes two weeks of vacation a year and calls it a life — that becomes the ceiling of your imagination. Not because you’re not capable of more, but because more was never modeled for you.
This is why it matters to live differently — not to be rebellious, not to be superior, but to expand what’s visible. To be someone’s “different” aunty. To show a teenager in a remote community that the world is wider than what she can see from where she stands.
You don’t have to be extraordinary to do this. You just have to be willing to live consciously — and let people watch.
Fear — the real reason we stay
So if we know something isn’t right — why do we stay?
Fear.
Fear of the unknown. Fear of failure. Fear of what people will think. Fear of losing the security we’ve worked so hard to build. Fear of discovering that the life we dreamed of isn’t actually better than the one we have.
Fear is not weakness. It is human. It shows up precisely where things matter most — which means that if something is scaring you, it might be exactly the thing worth moving toward.
The fear of leaving my career, my apartment, my city — it was real. The fear of arriving somewhere new with no guaranteed income, no plan, no roadmap — also real. But I had learned something from years of working with people in crisis: staying in a situation that isn’t working also has a cost. Staying is not the safe option. It just feels like one.
The question is never will I be afraid? The answer to that is always yes. The question is: will I move anyway?
A note on privilege
I want to be honest here, because this conversation deserves it.
Not everyone can move. Not everyone has the financial freedom, the passport, the family situation, the physical ability, or the support system to make dramatic changes. The quote you are not a tree is a powerful one — and it comes with the quiet assumption that movement is possible.
I was lucky. I had a good job with a sabbatical clause. I had no children, no mortgage. I had friends who held space for my dreams. I had a passport that opened doors. I had privilege — and I used it.
If your circumstances make movement harder, this is not a judgment of you. Change can be small. It can be internal. It can be a different job in the same city, a boundary you finally set, a class you sign up for, a conversation you stop avoiding. Moving doesn’t always mean packing your bags.
But if you do have the freedom to move — in any direction — and you are not using it, it’s worth asking yourself why.
What “moving” actually means
Intentional living is not always geographical. It is not always dramatic.
Moving can be leaving a job that has been slowly extinguishing you. Moving can be ending a friendship that has become one-sided. Moving can be choosing to study something you actually care about instead of something that looks good on paper. Moving can be saying no to the life someone else imagined for you.
Moving is any conscious act of choosing yourself.
It starts with a question: is this actually mine? Is this job, this relationship, this city, this routine — did I choose it? Does it reflect who I am? Does it leave room for who I’m becoming?
If the answer is no — you are not a tree. You can move.
The first step is the smallest one
You don’t have to upend everything at once. You don’t have to quit your job on a Monday morning or book a one-way flight by Friday.
The first step is smaller than that. It’s a conversation with yourself — honest, quiet, without judgment. It’s admitting, even just privately, that something doesn’t fit. It’s giving yourself permission to want something different.
Then, slowly, you start making space. You let go of what you don’t need. You lower the noise. You pay attention to what feels alive in you and what feels dead.
And one day — not all at once, but steadily — a door appears that wasn’t there before. And because you’ve made space, you can actually see it.
That is intentional living. Not a destination — a practice.
I painted that quote on my wall because I needed to see it every day. Not because I was ready to move — but because I was getting there.