Are We the Warden or the Prisoner?

In early August, soon after I was discharged from the hospital, I stayed at a nearby resort to recover for weeks.

My room was on the fifth floor, overlooking the city across the river. And almost perfectly in the middle of that view stood M Tower, near my office.

Every morning, around eight or nine, I would step onto the balcony for some sunlight and fresh air.

Across the river, the city was already moving. People were going to work, going somewhere, doing something.

At that time, I wanted desperately to recover.

But one morning I asked myself:

Why do I want to be healthy again?

The answer came immediately.

To be normal again.

And what was normal?

At eight in the morning, five or six days a week, I would already be in my office. Working. Planning. Solving problems. Managing people. Building the business.

Looking at M Tower from across the river, I could almost see that version of myself.

Busy.

Ambitious.

And strangely, isolated.

The Warden

Four months earlier, my personal trainer had complained to me about his life.

He is a bit younger than my age, same birthday as mine, energetic and funny, and over time he has become more like a friend than just a trainer. Going to the gym and listening to whatever he had to say was one of the joyful moments of my day.

One day, he told me how trapped he felt.

From morning until night, one training session followed another.

I feel like a prisoner. I want to escape.

I smiled and told him:

“If you don’t want to be a prisoner, be a warden.”

I explained that my life wasn’t completely different.

I owned the business. I had employees. Yet I still went to the office almost every day at a fixed time.

The difference, I told him, was simple:

I can leave whenever I want.

Four months later, standing on that balcony, I realized something.

I didn’t.

There was always another problem. Another plan. Another target. Another thought that seemed important enough to keep me there.

I had the keys.

But I wasn’t using them.

The Harshest Punishment

During hospitalization, I listened to 10% Happier by Dan Harris and encountered an idea about isolation being among the harshest punishments in prison.

Looking at M Tower, I began thinking about my own isolation.

As the business grew, my world gradually became smaller.

Most days in the office were me, my Mac mini, Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini. I spoke with managers through meetings and scheduled touchpoints. I gradually communicated less with everyone else.

I thought that was necessary.

Maybe some of it was.

But there was another side.

Two of my sisters live in the same city as me, yet years have passed without me visiting their homes.

We work for more money, more success, more authority and, eventually, more freedom.

But sometimes, the more we have, the more we have to hold.

And the things we built to create freedom can quietly become the walls around it.

Live as If There Is No Prison

I don’t think my answer today is to become a better warden.

Nor is it to see myself as a prisoner.

I want to be neither.

I still have businesses to run. I still want to build things, make money, achieve something and create opportunities for the people around me.

None of that has become meaningless.

But the business can be something I built without becoming somewhere I am imprisoned.

Perhaps freedom isn’t having the key and knowing I can leave whenever I want.

Perhaps it is remembering that my life was never supposed to become a prison in the first place.

Written during my recovery, while looking across the river toward the life I was preparing to return to.

Shaped from my audio journals with the help of an AI assistant.