It’s 2013.
We’re traveling through Australia, and we’re having an amazing year.
We stayed with so many different families all over the country, doing something called work exchanges. The idea was pretty simple: you stay with a family in their home, work for them for a few hours a day—usually around 20 hours a week—and in exchange, you get a place to stay and some food.
It was an incredible way to travel. We met amazing people. We had amazing experiences.
Except for one.
And isn’t it interesting how often the greatest wisdom comes from the hardest experiences?
It’s February 2013, and we’re in Tasmania, at the southern end of Australia. We pull up to a farming town called Campania.
Everything seems pretty normal from the get-go. They give us a tour of their beautiful estate and their home. The property is so big that we actually have to drive around to see it all. Huge farmland. Beautiful surroundings.
No red flags.
Yet.
Then they show us where we’re going to sleep.
A moldy old shed. With no bathroom.
We would have to walk about 100 feet to the main house just to use the bathroom.
First red flag.
The second red flag was Alisa’s job. Apparently, she was going to become a cow herder. Or wrangler.
We were pretty fresh from New York City. We weren’t exactly used to dealing with cows.
But they reassured her. All she had to do was hold her arms out, and this stampede of cows would just stop.
She was terrified. I could see it on her face.
Then we got to my work.
Alisa told me they had asked me to cut down an entire forest of trees.
There were a lot of trees.
I spent hours hacking them down, loading these huge pieces of wood into their pickup truck, moving them around, and then chopping all the wood with a giant axe—a big maul.
It was way more than four hours. But we were trying to do a good job.
By the time I finished, I was dying. I went inside to take a break for lunch.
And the lunch they served us was two pieces of toast, each with a slice of tomato and a slice of cheese.
I quickly finished mine.
“Can I please have some more?”
“No. That’s your serving.”
Wow.
That was a pretty big red flag.
Then they gave me my next job.
I was supposed to crawl into their muddy, murky, swampy pond and hack up all the reeds with a sickle. You know—the kind of sickle Death carries.
They gave me the sickle. They gave me these full-body waders with little booties attached—basically waterproof clothing.
So I put them on and climbed into the pond. I started hacking away at the reeds.
And after a while, I noticed something.
My pants were getting wet.
“I think my pants are getting wet.”
“No, no. Those are waterproof.”
So I kept going.
I hacked up all the reeds, climbed out of the pond, and looked down.
My pants were soaking wet. With disgusting, mucky pond water.
Another big red flag.
But we figured, okay. We’ll take the next day off.
We wanted to explore Hobart. There was a museum we wanted to see—the Museum of Old and New Art, MONA. We were excited about it.
So we told them we were going to take the day off.
And they said:
“No. You can’t leave.”
We said, “What are you talking about?”
We were there to explore the country.
And then they explained.
“Usually our ‘workers’ are Asian, and they’re hard workers, and they don’t have cars, so they can’t leave.”
That was the final straw.
Alisa and I decided to leave—in the middle of the night.
We didn’t tell them. We just packed up, got in the car, and drove away.
We never saw them again. Never heard from them again.
And as we drove through the night, we played music. We laughed.
We were free.
And it was a crazy experience. But underneath all the ridiculousness of it, something became very clear to us:
We were free to leave.
No one was holding a gun to our heads.
We had been afraid because they had guns, which is one of the reasons we chose to leave in the middle of the night.
But ultimately, we could leave.
And that realization stayed with me.
Because I think we forget this.
We’re all free to leave. We’re all free to make choices about what we do with this one life we’ve been given.
So often, we convince ourselves that we’re in bondage. That we owe someone something. That we have to stay. That we have no other choice.
But we don’t.
We always have choices.
Sometimes we may choose to stay. Sometimes we may choose to leave.
But knowing that we can leave changes everything.
And strangely enough, sometimes realizing you’re free to leave makes it possible to actually enjoy where you are.
You might still leave. Or you might not.
But when you know you always have choices in life, it changes everything.
~~~
This was shared live at The Return. Join me at the next one on December 16th.
~~~
Recent Rhymes 👇
(I share these daily on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn)
If this resonated, share it.
Send it to someone who could use a laugh today, or share it with your own community or network. Use the “Share” button below, or copy the link and post it wherever you like.
It’s also one of the greatest compliments you can give.
Thanks for being here inside The Circle Of Freethinkers — pull up a chair.
Until next time, Freethinker… stay present, be pleasant, and have an amazing day 🙏
Mike Messeroff
Creator of The Return and Self-Hospitality™
Author of Dogs Get It: Advice I learned from my best friend
