What Travel Taught Me About Freedom

Me in Boston, December 2021. Courtesy of Alisa

*It didn’t look like I thought it would.*

In the culture I grew up in, freedom was often measured by what you could buy, own, or defend. A bigger house, a better job, the right to carry a weapon — these were the symbols of success and autonomy. But the more I traveled, the more those definitions felt hollow.

It started slowly. I met people who lived differently. People who had never seen the inside of a corporate office or filled out an insurance form. People without cars, without credit scores, without backup plans. But they had something else: time. Stillness. Space. They had conversations that weren’t rushed. Days that weren’t packed. And a kind of quiet confidence that didn’t rely on what they owned.

They weren’t prepared for war. They weren’t chasing promotions. They were simply living.

I used to think I was free because I had choices. But many of those choices were illusions, tied to jobs I couldn’t leave and systems I couldn’t question. One of the biggest illusions was health insurance. In the U.S., it's often tethered to your employer. That might sound secure, but it means your well-being is bound to your job. Leave your job, and you risk your health. That’s not freedom. That’s dependency.

As I traveled, I encountered people who didn’t live with that fear. They had healthcare not because they had a certain job, but because their countries saw it as a public right. They could change paths, take risks, start businesses — and still be cared for. That was when I started to see how freedom isn’t just personal. It’s structural.

What if real freedom isn’t about protecting what you have, but about realizing you don’t need so much of it in the first place? What if the absence of fear is a better marker of liberty than the presence of force?

Travel changed me. But more than that, observing others changed me. Photography gave me a reason to pause and really see. Not just landscapes, but lives. The way a woman in a mountain village walked to market each morning. The way an old man drank his coffee in silence, watching the sky like it was a ritual.

I stopped seeing these lives as lesser. I started seeing them as freer.

Now, back home, I live with a different rhythm. I still work. I still pay bills. But I don’t chase the same kind of security anymore. I’m less afraid of letting go. Less convinced I need to prove anything.

To me, freedom isn’t noise. It’s not bravado or entitlement. It’s the gentle space that opens up when you stop clinging to things you were told you needed.

It’s the quiet weight you no longer carry.