10/05/2026
What struck me most about meeting Axel Pons, who now calls himself Essa, was not what he had achieved, but what he had willingly abandoned.
Here was a man who had already lived the dream most people spend their entire lives chasing: speed, recognition, status, the glamour of world class racing, and a life surrounded by the noise of achievement. Yet he walked away from all of it in search of something far quieter and far more difficult to find, purity, truth, Allah, and peace within himself.
Today, he wanders barefoot from Spain to Pakistan, living with almost nothing. No luxury. No internet. No obsession with owning more. He now spends time in the valleys of Kalash, wearing the same faded yellow clothes that may once have been white years ago. And somehow, despite having so little, he feels more complete than most of us ever do.
The way he speaks makes you realize how pure language can become when it is untouched by ego. The way he looks at the world feels free from fear, comparison, and the endless rat race we have mistaken for life. Sitting with him, you begin to notice how modern life has filled us with distractions disguised as necessities. We surround ourselves with noise, consumption, and constant wanting, believing fulfillment is waiting somewhere ahead of us.
But wants are endless. They keep us feeling small, unfinished, and behind.
Needs are simple.
And gratitude for those needs changes the entire shape of life.
Watching him walk away barefoot, feeling the earth directly beneath his skin, smiling with nothing in his possession except presence itself, I felt something shift inside me permanently. His satisfaction in simply being alive made many of our ambitions, anxieties, and carefully constructed identities suddenly feel fragile and shallow.
We spend years trying to become someone. Maybe peace begins when we stop running from who we already are.
Meeting him did not give me answers. It gave me better questions.
Copied From the wall of Irfan Ali Taj
