Little crystals of interiority, each of us exists in a world of one. Everyone else we can only know from without. And yet we ceaselessly impinge on one another — and in that gap between inner worlds, we face a choice: talk and listen until we reach a genuine sense of the other, or fill the unknowable space with our own fears and projections.

Anxiety is perhaps the most faithful companion of conscious life. But what if it is not simply an obstacle to be overcome — what if it is sometimes a signal worth listening to? An essay on anxiety, freedom, and the meaning that may be hiding inside the discomfort.

In September 2024, a 72-year-old French grandmother walked into a courtroom and did something that stopped a nation. French law would have fully protected her anonymity. She waived it anyway. What followed was one of the most extraordinary public demonstrations of human dignity in recent memory — and a profound illustration of what it means to choose freedom within suffering, rather than waiting for suffering to end.

“Meaning, when it recedes, does not usually return as a revelation. It returns through contact: through attention, responsibility, and participation in what is at hand. In that sense, it is less something one discovers than something one gradually re-enters.”

“When the meaning of the task comes back into focus, the ego’s performance anxiety simply has nowhere to stand.”

“There she was — outwardly diminished, barely present in any way the world could measure — and inwardly: radiant, lucid, entirely herself.”