to who?

on leaving, the justifications we think we owe, and the audience that was never really even there

Let me ask you something before we get into this.

When was the last time you made a decision… a real one, one that was entirely yours without first running it through the imaginary committee in your head? The one made up of colleagues and family members and people from your past and strangers on the internet who you’ve never met and who have never once lost sleep over your happiness?

I ask because I used to sit on that committee myself. Used to cast votes on other people’s decisions without being invited. Used to look at someone else’s choice and immediately start calculating how it would look, how it would read, what it would mean.

And then someone said two words to me that quietly dismantled the whole operation.

This is about those two words.

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I’m pretty sure we all know someone who just moves through the world with a kind of confidence in their own decisions that we find genuinely remarkable. We don’t see it as arrogance. Not even as recklessness. Just … this settled, unbothered knowing that their life belongs to them and they are allowed to direct it accordingly.

I have been working on becoming that person for a while now. And recently, without even trying, someone showed me exactly what that looks like.

Earlier this year, a colleague of mine made a decision that I could not stop thinking about. She had taken this new position in a new city, a new environment, a fresh start. I mean, if anyone knows, I KNOW that it takes courage just to make such a decision in the first place. And before the year was even over, she decided it wasn’t the right fit and she was leaving.

Just like that.

Back to where she came from, onto the next thing, no dramatic announcement, no lengthy explanation. Just a sure, clear decision made entirely in her own best interest.

And my first reaction (if I’m being honest) was not admiration. It was anxiety. On her behalf. For her. Odd right?

Isn’t she worried about how this looks? Isn’t she worried people will judge her for leaving so quickly? How does she justify picking up and leaving after less than a year here ?

I was so busy being worried for her that it took me a while to notice she wasn’t worried at all.

Eventually I asked her. Not to be rude, nor nosey … I just genuinely wanted to ask. You know … the way you ask someone something when their answer might contain something you need to hear. “How do you justify leaving after less than a year?”

She looked at me, unbothered, and said: “To who? Justify what to who?”

And that was it. That was the whole answer.

I think I laughed in the moment because it was so simple and so complete that there was nothing left to say. But later, sitting with it, I realized it wasn’t a dismissal. It wasn’t her being flippant or unbothered for the sake of seeming cool. It was a genuinely held belief that her decision belonged to her and the court of public opinion had not been invited to weigh in.

To who.

I had been so busy imagining the audience (the colleagues, the people back home, the résumé readers, whoever), that I hadn’t stopped to ask whether that audience actually existed. Or whether, even if they did, their opinion was any of my business.

It’s really something I’ve been thinking about ever since.

We are taught, very early, that commitment means endurance. That if you said yes to something like a job, a city, a relationship, or a plan, you owe it the full weight of your follow-through regardless of what you learn along the way. Leaving becomes something you have to defend. Staying becomes the default proof that you are serious, loyal, and mature. And I think that’s worth examining.

Because the institutions and environments and situations we commit ourselves to are not sitting around feeling guilty about their impact on us. A company will restructure without a second thought. A city will keep moving whether you thrive in it or not. A situation that isn’t working will not apologize for not working. They operate in their own best interest, quietly and without explanation, and nobody asks them to justify it.

So why do we ask that of ourselves?

There is a difference between gratitude and obligation. You can be genuinely thankful for what a place gave you and still decide it is not where you are supposed to stay. Those two things are not in conflict. Gratitude doesn’t require you to remain somewhere past the point of alignment. It just requires you to leave with integrity.

And she did. Cleanly, clearly, without even burning anything down.

I even thought about the version of her that could have stayed. That could have talked herself into another year, another semester, another few months. Just enough time to have a better answer ready for the imaginary audience.

And I think about how much of our lives get consumed by that kind of waiting. Waiting until it makes sense to leave. Waiting until we’ve suffered long enough to have earned the exit. Waiting for someone, somewhere, to look at our situation and say, “Okay, yes, you’ve paid your dues, you’re allowed to go now.”

Nobody is coming to say that.

The permission you’re waiting for was never going to arrive from the outside. It was always going to have to come from you. From the settled decision that your life belongs to you and you are allowed to direct it accordingly. Even when the timing isn’t clean. Even when the explanation isn’t simple. Even when the audience you’ve been performing for turns out to be entirely imaginary.

You are allowed to take the lesson and go.

bisous,
zion

If this felt like a conversation we’d have over coffee, you can always [buy me one ☕️].