Kalisme · Guideposts

You’re allowed to want something other than the life you’ve built

Wanting something other than the life you have built is neither ingratitude nor a whim: you are allowed to want, and it commits you to nothing more than asking yourself the question. Kalisme, a way of living born in Lausanne, comes down to 13 simple sentences that remind you what you’re allowed to do for yourself. This one says: “You’re allowed to say no to what steals your peace”.

By Hakan Kaynar · Published on 29.10.2026

“I have everything I need to be happy”, and yet

The sentence often comes with an apology attached. A steady job, people you love, a life others would envy, and this stubborn longing for something else: another line of work, another city, another pace. Straight away, the reproaches begin. What right do you have, when so many people don’t have half of what you have?

So you keep quiet. You file the longing under whims, you tell yourself you ought to be grateful, and you carry on. The longing, though, does not leave. It turns into tiredness, irritation, Sunday evenings that weigh on you for no obvious reason.

Gratitude and longing are not mutually exclusive

We were taught to set them against each other, as if wanting something else meant looking down on what you have. That is a confusion. You can care about your life and still feel that part of it no longer fits you. Gratitude speaks of what you have been given. Longing speaks of where you are today, of what no longer fits you. Neither cancels the other.

The founding text of Kalisme, the manifesto “The Kaliste”, describes this mechanism in relation to money, but it holds far beyond that: many of us received two contradictory messages, succeed on the one hand, don’t want too much on the other, because wanting would be vulgar. Its answer is clear: you are allowed to want.

Silence is not peace

The sentence “You’re allowed to say no to what steals your peace” is often taken as an invitation to calm. The manifesto says almost the opposite: it warns against peace mistaken for passivity, against a serenity that is only surrender and a silence that is only fear.

Keeping quiet about what you want so as not to bother anyone, yourself included, looks like peace from the outside. From the inside, it is an arrangement you pay for every day. The idea behind this sentence is short: peace of mind is worth more than a comfortable arrangement. The manifesto concludes that you may refuse a commitment that costs you your peace, and the same right holds for a life you keep going as it is without ever asking whether it still suits you.

Wanting commits you to nothing

This is the fear that holds people back most: if I let myself want something else, I will have to leave everything. This sentence concerns the right to want, not an obligation to act tomorrow. Naming a longing commits you to nothing except no longer denying it.

The manifesto observes that blocks never come alone: someone who does not allow themselves rest usually does not allow themselves to disappoint, to ask or to want either. What follows the longing belongs to other sentences of Kalisme, such as not letting fear decide or trying with no guarantees, and each is taken at its own pace, in no required order. A longing you acknowledge may lead to a big change, a small adjustment, or nothing at all, if on closer inspection you find it was saying something else.

Two ways to look the longing in the eye

Write it down without justifying it. One sentence: “I want…”. No “but”, no “even though”, no apology addressed to those who have less. As long as a longing can only be stated together with its defence, the reproach still holds.

Ask it what it needs. The eleventh chapter of the manifesto advises questioning an anger that persists, because it may well be right. A longing that keeps coming back deserves the same question. It often points to something specific: a need for time, meaning, space, recognition. Sometimes that calls for a different life, sometimes only for changing one thing in the life you have.

When it weighs more

If this longing for elsewhere comes with an emptiness that lasts, a loss of drive or real distress, it is no longer a matter of permission, and a doctor or another health professional is the right door.

In an emergency: 999 in the United Kingdom, 911 in the United States, 144 in Switzerland.

To talk to someone, day or night: Samaritans on 116 123 in the United Kingdom, the 988 Lifeline in the United States, La Main Tendue on 143 in Switzerland.

Elsewhere, the numbers for your country are on findahelpline.com.

This week, write a single sentence that begins with “I want”, and add nothing after it. You don’t have to do anything with it. You only have the right to read it again.