I haven't moved physically in quite a long time (well, for my terms). I have, however, grown a lot in my mind, I believe, for several reasons. It would be nice to say that the master's program I am following is the main reason, but I am afraid the truth is closer to: I have read many, many articles and blog posts, shared by my friends on Facebook. And I have read scientific papers and I have thought a lot about stuff.

What I was going to say is: since I am in the same place I can't really tell you about any amazing new places, so instead I will, for now, write more on theories behind my life. This may sound really boring to you, so I forgive you, if you stop following my blog, I don't blame you. However, I believe that more important than the places I go, are the reasons why I lead the life I have chosen. I am currently happier than ever with it, and while I do not want to try and persuade anyone to follow my example, I want to share some of the deeper thoughts on it with you, so you can make your own well-informed choice.

This time I have chosen to write about freedom. This is because I have read many blogs of people telling you, how much the life of a nomad actually sucks. And it certainly does, if you have the wrong expectations. But then, everything sucks, if you have the wrong expectations. So I want to now tell you the truth about freedom. I guess, we all have a kind of a vision of freedom in our minds, even though probably no one of us is able to explain in a couple sentences what it really means. People go to the USA to pursue freedom. I didn't, of course, but I certainly know that if there is any kind of freedom in that country, I would rather not have it. The freedom I have achieved, is exactly what I want, but I also know it is not for everyone. So, when you wish for freedom the next time, think about it better and think about whether you really want it.

Of course, when I was young, I often wished that I could lead this or that life of someone I saw on TV or heard about. Amazingly, now, I don't ever wish for anything other than what I do. Well, of course, there are moments when I wish, I'd be somewhere else, or do something else. Like when it's snowing and my bike is frozen and so I have to leave the house half an hour before I would normally have to, in order to catch the bus, which is crammed with school kids, then I wish I was in a country that's just a little bit warmer. But when I think about it a little more then I realize that, actually I wouldn't know what I would do in that country that is a little warmer at that moment, and that actually, what I am doing here is perfect. And then I decide to just be happy with what I got, and let it snow, knowing that it will be spring eventually, which is much better than being somewhere where it is always warm. And here is the thing: this is, because I am free. I am totally free. So: if, for some reason, I'd decide that actually, rather than being here, I would be somewhere warmer, then as a logical result I would have to pack my bags and move to somewhere warmer. Because this is freedom. I got the life that I chose. And if I am not happy with it, then there is no one that I could blame other than me. This is it: I am 100% responsible for my life. I can go around thinking I would like to be somewhere else, or do something else or be someone else, but there is NOTHING that stops me. So if I would like to be somewhere else or someone else, then I would simply go somewhere else or be someone else. Just like that. Freedom is amazing. It is also scary.

Of course, I didn't become free yesterday. It was a long road and I am trying to reconstruct it here. Again, this is not "the road to freedom", it is just my road to freedom. Obviously, yours, if you choose to take it, will look very different.

I know it started before but I think the first really important step was when I went to Canada for an exchange in 2004. At that time I had no clue about life the way I do now and what I did was for practical reasons: you can only take two suitcases on a plane to Canada. So I had to drastically reduce my belongings. It was hard for me to think of what to take when you go to live in a different country for a year. The decisions were made a lot easier by the knowledge that there are stores in Canada, where you can buy stuff, if you forgot something important. That was the first time, and it made me realize just how little stuff I actually needed. I had taken a lot of things that I never even looked at, while I was there. I realized that all the stuff I always had, made my life harder, not easier. It defined who I was, so I couldn't define that myself. Sometimes, I guess, it's good to just throw out stuff that you don't use any more, just to mark a step that you have taken. You are constantly growing and if you have too much stuff you are attached to, sometimes you can't grow.

So, of course, with every time that I move to a different place, I pack fewer things and I learn to live with less and less. I put very different values to things. Probably the most important step on my road was my time in Mexico and in many ways. Most importantly, probably, because I realized that happiness is in no way related to how much money you have. Of course, this is obvious and no one really believes that, and there are also scientific studies showing that (I can give you some references if you are interested). But in the back of my head, when I went to South Africa and Mexico, I still had that basic idea that the people there are poor. Poor not in financial terms but poor in the way that we put poor in pictures: starving children, women carrying water for miles, people in rags, people crying, sick, well, you get the idea. The pictures you see in books or on TV when they talk about poverty. Of course, what they don't tell you is that the kind of poverty they are picturing there is not so much financial as basically just a lack of access to … (insert whatever: schools, health service, clean water, etc). And they are two different things. They always make us believe that they are the same, but they are not. Not having money and not having power/access are sometimes related but often times they are not. Like, I personally don't need money to have access to these things. I mean I need money, of course, but I need a lot less than what any poverty report would deem necessary. Just my passport gives me access to many things, many other people don't have. On the other hand, you can have tons of money and still be poor - for example if you don't have friends and a community that looks after you. And I guess, this is one of the things I learned in Mexico: the community that looks after you, is much more important than the money you have at any given time. This was even more obvious in South Africa, even though I only realized that later: the migrants that came to South Africa from Zimbabwe fleeing the war there, were not poor because they didn't have money. There are lot of blacks in South Africa that don't have money. But they are not poor. Because they are part of the community. The community that tells you when there is a job where you can earn something. Or that watches your house, while you're gone. Or that lends you things that you don't have. Or that shares food with you, relying on the fact that next time when you have money, you will share yours with them. So there is a clear need for a re-definition of poverty but that's a different story. For me, I learned that poverty in monetary terms is actually not bad. And I also learned that poor people are much more social. Of course, it makes a lot of sense, because of the community mentioned above. Basically, when you are reasonably sure that you have money and will always have money to care for yourself then you become self-reliant and egoistic because you don't assume that one day you will need to rely on others so you don't see any reason to help others. And this is what makes Mexico such a nice place to be. It is part of the life there, to care for others. They have not (yet) become egoistic and self-reliant. This is also how I fell in love with the country.

Something else I learned in Mexico was to live off what the land provides you. I stayed on three farms while I was there and I learned a lot about growing food and cooking it. I also learned a lot about the simplicity of life. I had learned about that before on various field trips and doing field work but actually living on the farm and eating what we produced ourselves was an amazing experience. And I said, I won't tell you what you should do, but if you have never experienced that beauty of planting vegetables and then going to your garden at dinner time looking around what is ripe and based on that, decide what you will eat, then do! This is the only thing that you really need to do. Absolutely!

And all the time I have been travelling, doing stuff, I learned one thing for sure: that in the end, I don't live to please other people. That it is my life. And that every day I spend doing something I don't like without any direct aim to do something I like, is a lost day and you only have so many days in your life. And that it is up to you to make your life the life that you want to live. I know you could say I am a loser, and you are welcome to think that of me. Because the truth is, measured by the standards of our society, I am. I am a loser in Europe, because I don't have a job and a car. I am a loser in Mexico because I am not married and have no kids. But the important thing to me is that I am happy, and I am. Whether I have a great career, children, a PhD, earn tons of money, finish what I said I would do, that only matters to you. Of course, whatever you do, you have to live with the consequences, but the trouble with our society is that, rather than aiming for happiness we aim for success. And success is often defined by others, not by ourselves. For my part, success currently means, that I managed to lead a life in freedom and be happy with it. So while, I don't think there is any culture in this world that actually counts this as success,

Well, and now the final step on my road to freedom was probably also the most important (together with the others). And it was not that one day I woke up and decided this, it was rather a long transformation that came about through all the experiences I made on the way. But now I feel entirely free from the forces of money. And from the day that I realized that, I must admit I am even happier than I was before (even though I was mainly happy before too). Now, I am not trying to say that I live without money, I know there are people who do that, but I don't. Actually currently I am spending quite a lot of money because I go climbing and do other things that are quite expensive (for my terms). What I mean with being free is not that I don't have or use money but it is a mental thing. And it is hard to describe, I noticed it, when it was there but I can't really tell you. I guess, the best way to describe it is as a feeling of security. Because, of course, when you live a life of freedom as I do, I don't have any pension fund, I don't have social security that will pay me when I am unemployed. And while I enjoyed my freedom before, I can't deny that I didn't think of these things. And they made me feel insecure. The feeling that, any time something could happen and then I couldn't go on doing what I am doing now and I wouldn't have either the Mexican community to care for me, nor the European social system. And call me crazy if you wish, but I don't worry about these things any more. I know, of course I still can have an accident and things can happen. But I have found a kind of deeper trusting in life. A confidence that, after all, the economic system, that we live in, is not actually true. It will not be there much longer and it has already partly been replaced and will be replaced more and more by something that is very much like the Mexican community that is looking after its members. I think, the crucial thing is, to be able to live your life in freedom, while being part of a larger community that you know you can rely on, when you need them, always giving back to the community, whenever you can. It is this reciprocity that makes the world go round. It is the reason why I do not need payment for the work I do. Because I know that contrary to what they try to tell us, reciprocity is real, and I know I can rely on people looking after me when I need them, the way I look after them when they need me. I have had too many experiences like that, in order to still believe the teachings of capitalism. I know, the world works differently. And I like the way it works. This believe in a system that actually works for you, I guess, other people call it God, I just call it freedom, but I found it. And I love it J

PS: this site won't let me post a blog entry without a picture but I don't really have any pictures at the moment, so I just took an old one…