Normal is Plural

I always call somewhere home. The word arrives naturally, without decision. I say it and mean it and then later say it again about somewhere else and mean that too.

Home is fluid. I have known this for long enough that it no longer feels like a loss.

Normal is the same. We say it as though it were universal. But my normal in Hungary and my normal in London and my normal in Vietnam are not translations of each other. They are different languages entirely. You cannot look the word up in a dictionary. You have to live inside it for a while before it starts to make sense, and even then what makes sense to you will not make sense to the person standing next to you, even if you share a postcode, even if you share a bed.

Normal is plural. It always was. We just built infrastructure around one version of it and called that reality.

There is a paradox that arrives when you have lived in many places. You stop needing the fourteen toothpastes. Not because you become ascetic or superior about it but because you have seen people live well on two, on one, on whatever is available, and the abundance starts to look less like freedom and more like a question you have to answer every morning before you have even brushed your teeth.

Does having everything make you forget you already have enough.

The fear, in many places I have lived, is the habit rather than the reality. The infrastructure is already there — the healthcare, the stability, the food, the safety so embedded it has become invisible. And still the chasing continues. More money. More certainty. More. Not because the rain is actually falling but because the memory of rain, or the idea of rain, or someone else's rain, keeps the fear alive long after the umbrella is open.

I say this not from above it. I am inside it too. I have stood under the umbrella and felt cold anyway.

What living in many places gave me was not superiority over any of them. It was the ability to see each one from the outside while still being inside it. Medellín, Bangalore, Almaty alongside Paris, London, Tokyo. The logic of each place visible because you have seen the logic of another. Not better. Just multiple. The same way you can hold several languages and none of them cancels the others out.

How do we know what we know, and what invisible forces organise that knowing. How does a human being learn to think for themselves.

Not through the toothpastes. Through encounters. Through the book that finds you at the right moment. Through the conversation that unravels something you had been carrying without knowing its name. Through sitting with a question long enough that the question itself starts to change shape.

As Paul Zacharia understood it: the web catches the prey. The spider just eats what the web brings.

I wove the web. I built the conditions. The materials were privilege and time and the particular freedom of not being under survival pressure, which is not nothing, which is in fact everything, which is the thing most people do not say out loud when they talk about how they got here. Hungary gave me the melancholy and the precision. Vietnam gave me the warmth and the responsibility toward continuity. Britain gave me the permission structure, the intellectual confidence, the language the world reads in. And I — the consciousness sitting at the intersection of all three, belonging fully to none of them and therefore free to take from all of them — took those materials and built something that did not exist before.

The hunting is done by the geometry of the work. I just had to build it and trust it and let it catch what it was shaped to catch.

We exist in a constant state of ambiguity. Clarity and confusion arriving together, bliss and suffering sharing the same morning.

Change is the only constant. And if that is true, which it is, which every version of normal in every city I have called home has confirmed, then the only intelligent response is to welcome it. Not to grip. Not to build higher walls around whichever version of normal you happen to be standing in. To trust the motion.

Normal is plural. Home is fluid. Impermanence is not a problem to be solved. It is the condition of everything, including the self that keeps arriving somewhere new and calling it home.

And the self means it every time.

Game declined

Every game needs two players. Without a counter-move, it simply is not a game.

Someone decides you are not enough of the thing you are. They hand you a word. Sometimes it is gentle, almost affectionate. Sometimes it cuts. The word changes depending on where you stand and who is doing the measuring, but the mechanism is always the same. You are being tested against a standard you did not set, judged by rules you did not write, and found wanting by someone who appointed themselves the judge.

Here is how it works.

A comment about your language, your customs, your choices, your distance from a place they consider the source. The comment carries an implication: you have strayed too far, diluted too much, forgotten something essential. You are less than you should be. This is the opening move.

Your go. Will you defend yourself? Will you list your credentials, recite your knowledge, prove your belonging? Do it, and you have entered the game. And in entering, you have already validated the premise — that their judgment holds weight, that your identity is something external to be audited and approved, that you owe proof.

Defense is participation. And participation is loss.

The board is fiction. The hierarchy being defended is arbitrary. The authenticity you are being measured against is a moving target, a test designed so that someone like you cannot pass. The game was rigged from the start. The only way to win is not to play.

Refusal is hearing the comment, seeing the board being set up, and choosing not to move your piece. Letting the move fall into empty space, unanswered, unmet. No counter-move. No game.

Underneath the comment, someone is trying to hand you their pain. Their discomfort with change, with displacement, with the impossibility of keeping cultures pure in a world that has always been mixing. Unresolved grief about staying or leaving, about holding on or letting go, about carrying a weight they never chose but cannot put down.

You do not have to take it.

Secure people welcome. They are curious. They ask questions not to test but to understand. They share what they know without making you feel that your not-knowing is a failure. Their sense of self is not threatened by your existence.

Insecure people build hierarchies. They measure suffering as if it were a credential. They need you to be lesser so they can be more. They need you to fail the test so their passing it still means something. Because if you are allowed to belong without meeting their standards, without carrying what they carry, without suffering the way they suffered — then maybe the standards were never real. And that is unbearable.

Suffering seeks company.

Without a counter-move, it is not a game. It is just someone talking to themselves.

Identity is not a test you pass or fail. It is not something external that can be measured, graded, audited by others. It is lived. It is felt. It is the accumulation of a thousand small inheritances, choices, accidents, migrations, losses, and survivals that you did not choose but carry anyway. You do not owe proof. You do not owe performance. You do not owe anyone the story of how you came to be the way you are.

There is no authentic version of you that exists somewhere else, in some other language, some other place, some other life. There is only this version. The one standing here. Shaped by migration and survival and a hundred choices made by people who came before you. Carrying inheritances you did not choose but cannot put down. Trying to live in a world that keeps asking you to pick a side when you are made of many.

You are the result of movement, of mixture, of borders crossed and languages learned and cultures held loosely because holding them tightly would break them. You are what happens when worlds collide and create something new.

And new simply is new.

The Cage Question

Imagine that you are in a cage.

However, you are not human but animal.

1. Tell me the first animal that comes to your mind.

2. Describe the cage in as much detail as possible.

***

The cage offers a window into how we understand ourselves, our limitations, and the often unspoken rules that govern our lives. The animal symbolises the raw, unfiltered essence of who we are, while the cage represents the external structures imposed by society, family, or even our own minds, which we perceive as containing us.

This exercise is a way to get to know someone better. Ask them for their thoughts on their chosen animal and keep asking for more details. What colour is the floor? What's in the corner? Understand what their cage looks like and how they feel inside it.

When asked to describe their chosen animal, people unconsciously reveal their feelings: how they view their constraints and their potential for freedom. People talk about it without realising it, it's disarming. Some see themselves as raging bulls, straining against the bars. Others might envision themselves as birds, unable to imagine a cage, seeing it as a room where they can fly high and gain new perspectives.

There is no difference between the cage and the animal because the boundaries we think we see, the limitations we feel, are essentially linked to the essence of who we are. The cage is not an external force keeping us trapped. It is an extension of the animal, of us, a manifestation of how we perceive the world and our place in it.

For some, the bars are thick and unyielding, representing deep beliefs, fears, or societal expectations that feel impossible to break free from. For others, the cage may be fragile, barely noticeable, something that could be shifted at any moment if only they realised their own power.

Those who are fully assimilated by society won't see the cage; they are so into the illusion they see no boundaries.

You can't possibly be comfortable everywhere. The people who don't see the cage, who think they are free, are often those most confined by it. They are so deeply assimilated into the expectations and norms of society that they don't even realise they're in a cage at all. For these people, the cage has become indistinguishable from the world they live in.

To see the cage, to feel its bars, is the first step toward freedom, because in recognising the boundaries, you give yourself the power to redefine them.

Some see themselves as dragon lying dormant. Their cage is made out of twigs so thin that if the dragon moves the cage collapses. The cage has a sword going through securing the enclosed there.

When I was first proposed this question, I saw myself as a tiger: fierce and strong, caged within a zoo-like structure. The bars were thick and unyielding, allowing minimal space to walk in a circle. The ceiling was so high that the tiger could not see the end, leaving it to wonder if there was ever an escape.

I've always identified with a tiger. Growing up in a country different from my heritage, I often felt the pressure to assimilate, clinging to anything that made me feel part of the society around me. These were desperate attempts to fit in and be accepted. Within those confines, I've become both resilient and strong. I like having my space and feeling secure in it. The adaptability I've developed reminds me of a big cat: flexible yet firm. Tigers are known for being unpredictable, quick to make decisive moves. Similarly, my emotions can flare up intensely, yet at other times, I am calm and steady, like a quiet giant. There's an untamed strength in tigers, but also a sense of grace. That combination is where my confidence resides.

The question is not whether the cage exists but whether we understand it for what it is. The tiger, the dragon, the bird: they are all aspects of ourselves, representing how we move through life, how we see our power, and how we navigate our perceived limitations. But the cage, too, is part of us. It's a creation of our minds, built from our beliefs about the world and our place in it. When we understand that the cage is of our own making, we can begin to shape it, bend it, and eventually walk through it with the power of knowing we were never truly confined.

There is no world outside of you. Everything you experience is a reflection of your own thoughts, perceptions, and beliefs. The cage is not imposed by society, nor is it forced upon you by external forces. It is you. The world, as we know it, is a mental construct. When you change your mind, you change your world.

Just as the cage can be a symbol of confinement, it can also be a symbol of transformation. The cage, initially seen as a binding constraint, can, however, evolve into a sanctuary that not only helps us exist in a certain way but also protects us and aids in navigation. The cage is something to be understood. And in that understanding lies the key to our freedom.

Parrot in a Sea of Penguins

Some people think a hundred thousand dollars is the hardest thing to earn. For others, they can just get a hundred thousand.

The concept of earning is small. You can lecture me about earning while I enjoy my life in the suburbs. Are you trying to prove a point? So what if I didn't earn it with hard work? I was born with it. You made it to Earth: did you earn that? Do you earn who you are or where you are? You have not earned anything, no matter what.

Because I earn money, I have earned the right to live? Absurdity. Our value and right to exist aren’t defined solely by our economic contribution but by our intrinsic worth as human beings and the unique qualities we bring to the world. Your worth is inherent in who you are: the kindness you show, the connections you build, the impact you make through your authenticity. Earn the things that matter to you. It's never next time, it's now.

Parrot in a sea of penguins.

You need to establish a person’s worldview to get to know someone. Some people believe to exist is to make money. And the same perspectives tend to hand out together because they perpetuate that worldview and won’t question it.

What does rich mean to you? What does making a living mean? What if I live on a farm and don’t even use money? Is that making a living?

The answer depends entirely on the worldview of the person you are speaking to.

Which is why you have to establish that first. You have to know what game they think they are playing, what winning looks like from where they stand, what they would say if you asked them quietly, without judgment, on an ordinary Tuesday: what does any of this mean to you?

Because some people will answer with a number.

And some people will pause.

And in that pause, in the space between the question and whatever comes next, that is where you find out who you are actually talking to.