Rewilding myself

Can I find her again, the 20-year old me, who saw life as nothing but pure play and adventures?

In my early 20s, I did everything I could to escape the rules and expectations of modern society.

The world told me to be ambitious, self-sacrificing, a good worker, a good consumer. Play by the rules. Get a job. Work until you die.

All the people around me seemed to go down that path without questioning. Many disappeared to university right out of high school. But I wanted something else. I was restless.

How could everyone be so content with this way of life? I wanted to see how other people lived. The people in deepest Africa and Asia, what do their days look like? What do they dream of?

So, instead of going to university, I traveled. I mostly explored countries far different from the Western way of life, living a very simple and sometimes very primitive lifestyle together with likeminded people. I didn’t seek or wait for permission to do anything. I just did what I wanted to do. I was sick and tired of the life I had lived.

The world I had grown up in was too clean. Too easy. Too superficial. No real challenges. Too coddled. Too safe. I wanted to see the real world, because in my mind, this wasn’t it.

And I found it - in different places scattered around the globe, in the most unlikely of locations. The first being in South Africa. I knew my mind would never be the same, which makes me think about one of my favourite quotes: “A mind once stretched can never go back to its former dimensions.” I was forever changed by my different explorations in places across the globe.

Driving south. The road from Sudan to Ethiopia.

I’ve always loved reading and I’ve adored books for as long as I can remember. I read everything that came my way: ingredients lists on products, signs, manuals, encyclopedias, etc.

University had always a dream of mine since I was little—not as a means to a career or wealth, but to deepen my knowledge of the world, of everything. A way to refine my mind. To learn how to think.

After six years in academia, I gained what I sought—but I also lost something. I became more shaped by the system I once resisted than I would’ve liked. I internalized its expectations, its carefulness, its need for validation.

Now, I realize I have to rewild myself or else I might as well be dead. To return to the mindset I had back then—curious, bold, untamed. To reconnect with the raw, intuitive way of living that once guided me.

Wilderness Psychology is my way back. It’s about understanding the mind through being out in nature, stripping away the layers of conditioning, and stepping into life with the same fearless energy I once had.

This is my journey. And maybe, in some way, it’s yours too.