By: Susana Gil del Real
Bariloche, Argentina (taken by the author on her travels).
I’ve been thinking a lot about freedom this past month. New year, new me, as they say, so I’m trying to figure out what I’m doing with my life, where I want to go, what I want to aim for. When I wrote down my list of resolutions at the beginning of 2023, I wanted to write something that would inspire me to break out of my comfort zone, to mark a new beginning.
For the past several months, I’ve been stuck in the land of in-between, anxious to find some motivation to escape it. Freedom sounds like something I could aim for.
But what is freedom? What does it mean to me? Have I ever even felt free?
What first occurs to me when I think about freedom is being able to do whatever I want, and nothing holding me back. Being an adult has granted me access to a lot of these small privileges. I can go to a party without asking for permission, if I want to. I can get a pint of ice cream and eat it in one sitting, if I want to. I can buy a pair of $300 sneakers and never wear them, if I want to.
But the state of being free, for an extended period of time, in life? That’s different.
I can think of two instances in my life where I felt, in my heart of hearts, free. Or at least free in my invented sense of the word, which I’m still trying to figure out.
The first was after college, when I got a job in New York. For a few glorious months, my life was amazing—I was working at my dream job, living in the best city in the world, making new friends, and “finding myself”.
I rented a tiny apartment with my roommate in the East Village with windows that all faced a brick wall, a shower that occasionally regurgitated waste water, and a small kitchenette that mysteriously supplied us with a small but steady stream of water bugs (a fancy word that New Yorkers use for small cockroaches). Although it wasn’t the most charming of places, we were delighted by it. We convinced ourselves it had “character,” and that by living here, we were going through a certain “rite of passage” that would turn us into real New Yorkers. And if we ever felt cramped, New York was right outside the door.
And sure enough, New York was mine for the taking. I would go out to museums, restaurants, and bars, wandering the streets as I liked. I discovered new neighborhoods around the city and formed opinions on them as if I was a New York native (the East Village was the best, no doubt about it). I was ridiculously lucky with the daily Broadway lotteries, and snagged orchestra tickets for Wicked, Oklahoma!, Phantom of the Opera, Book of Mormon, Moulin Rouge, and a few others, just in the first few months I was there. I could throw parties if I wanted to, or I could stay in and do nothing. The world was my oyster—or so it felt.
COVID hit a few months later, and overnight all these freedoms went away. The world had changed. I was trapped inside my tiny apartment, which had suddenly become a prison, terrified of stepping foot outside my door and contracting this deadly disease that was permeating the very air around me. I barely saw the sunlight, which only shined at certain times of day when the sun was directly over the space between my window and the brick wall across from me. I started to kill the waterbugs with my bare hands, savagely, resenting them for intruding in my space when they had the whole world at their disposal. To top it all off, my roommate had left the city; and so, it seemed, had everyone else I knew. I kept reading articles about mass graves in New York City for those who died from COVID-19 and had no family members to claim them. Fear and solitude governed my life, and I had never felt more helpless to it.
Even after I got my vaccines and restrictions started to lift, slowly, I never quite recovered that initial sense of wonder and optimism I had arrived with.
I left New York last year, quitting my job and joining the ranks of the Great Resignation movement—a phenomenon wherein people resigned from their jobs en masse post-COVID-19. My experience of the city had practically been defined by the stupid pandemic, and I wanted out. To start fresh, somewhere new. So I backpacked through South America for a few months, starting in Colombia and heading down the west side to Argentina. I stayed in hostels, met dozens of people, and made friendships that lasted anywhere from a couple of hours to a few weeks.
I ate the local food, visited ornate churches, went on walking tours, climbed mountains, and walked through deserts. I had an empanada in every country for comparison’s sake (and can definitively say that Argentina has perfected the craft). I took a 30-hour bus ride and made it to the very bottom of the continent. I saw flamingos in the wild!
Not all the moments were amazing, I admit. I got food poisoning from some dodgy ceviche at a local market in Cusco, contracted COVID during a five-day hike to Machu Picchu, experienced elevation sickness in La Paz, and twisted my ankle walking through a glacier in Argentina. But it all felt very adventurous, and in hindsight even the obstacles had a little glamor to them, despite how miserable and inconvenient they seemed at the time.
I was hopping around for four months, staying for as long or as little as I wanted in any given place, and not making any plans more than 24 hours in advance.
This was, unsurprisingly, the second time I ever felt free—as a prolonged state of mind. But it was different this time.
Where in New York I felt a mounting potential, an excitement for a future I could see unfolding before me, in South America it was the opposite. The future was not an object. My days were unstructured and unplanned. My dreams were all short-term, and revolved only around the next place I wanted to see, which could change at any moment. I was traveling alone, and so I did what I wanted, and answered to nobody except myself and my own whims.
Despite their vast differences, both these moments have one thing in common: I was focused on myself. They were selfish parts of my life—and I mean that in the best way—times when I felt like the main character in my story.
This checks out. When I think of freedom, another word comes to mind: independence. And isn’t independence also centered around the self, about being an individual apart from others?
Now, I’m not saying that to be free you need to separate yourself from other people, because that’s a depressing and toxic takeaway, and not at all what I mean. But I do think that freedom needs to have an element of self-indulgence, a touch of individualism. And maybe it isn’t meant to be a long-term lifestyle, but rather moments of reprieve where you stop thinking about other people and just do what you want to do.
As I get older, I know I’ll have more responsibilities that will prevent me from seizing these moments, so I’m determined to look out for them and take advantage of them while I can. If I want to uproot my life and move to another country, I will. If I want to change my mind about my career and try something new, I can.
In the moments when I don’t necessarily feel like I’m experiencing a “free era”, when it feels like my world is getting narrower and I’m failing at meeting my expectations, there are small freedoms that I can still have, ones that give me a sense of power that is both fleeting but timeless. Going out dancing is one of them. Changing my hair. Wearing my favorite pair of pants. These are small things that give me confidence, that remind me that I am the one in control.
I always start the year off with a dozen resolutions, and I’m lucky if I accomplish even a quarter. But it’s a tradition I like to keep, and I continue to write down my lists at the beginning of each year in my notebook (a habit that is motivational until I look at the promises to myself from previous years).
In 2023, I want to keep chasing this idea of freedom; but writing down “be free” in my notebook sounds dumb, and also way too vague. So instead, I’ve decided to be a little more selfish. Number one in my “Resolutions 2023” list says: Be the main character.
I’m hoping that freedom will follow.
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