Sometimes, when I start thinking about something deeply existential and dive into reflections on meaning, freedom, and responsibility, some interesting thoughts appear. For example: what can really stop someone from going on a round-the-world journey that will not be limited to just one 'circle'?

At first glance, it seems like a very simple question with a very simple answer. But if you dig a bit deeper, it becomes far more curious.

I genuinely believe that there is no such thing as absolute freedom for one simple reason: as a species, throughout our entire existence, we have been limiting both our own freedom and the freedom of those around us, and we keep doing it.

One example of such limitation is state borders. This is one possible answer to the question at the beginning of this post. This construct has not always existed. If you look at the whole span of human history, it appeared only 'yesterday'. Strict controls over movement are barely more than a century old: they emerged around the First World War, roughly in 1914. And after the war, in 1920, standard passports appeared.

There is another kind of limitation: voluntary responsibility. Its roots go much deeper, into our history, culture, and evolution as a species.

Voluntary responsibility can take very different forms and appeared long before nation-states.

Responsibility toward close people such as parents, a partner, or a friend emerged together with our formation as a distinct species, because it was critically important for our survival. But here too we went very far: we often take on not just responsibility, but something close to self-sacrifice.

So, returning to the original question: a round-the-world journey can also be stopped by responsibility toward loved ones, because we feel we cannot simply leave them. Other primates do not go that far. In their societies, there is responsibility for all members of the group, but without self-sacrifice in a human sense. So if some bonobo suddenly decided to go on such a journey, the responsibility holding it back would be much weaker than the one that holds back a human.

Here we reach another limitation: our psychology and the very sense of each individual life. This has been shaped across generations, and also under the influence of our cultures.

This particular limitation awakens questions in us such as:

Existential:

The freedom of choice I am striving for is frightening in itself. To go on a round-the-world trip means to take full responsibility for my own life. And that responsibility is scary: what if I choose the wrong path? What if, by following my dream, I lose myself and cannot return to the life I once knew?

Or pessimistic:

What if, by setting off on this journey, I will simply be running away from the central fact of my life, my own mortality? In the end, no one can escape the end, and the journey will only postpone that inevitable moment.

Personally, I think that this kind of absolute freedom gives rise to a person’s fear of the very idea of absolute freedom. That is why, from the earliest stages of our formation as a species, we have been voluntarily limiting ourselves.

If you give a person a million doors and tell them that behind each door awaits their future, each one completely unique, that person will be paralysed by the fear of making the wrong choice. All because they do not realise a simple fact: every day, the world opens an infinite number of doors in front of them. And every day, without noticing it, following their own limitations and internal rules, they choose only one of these doors, forever depriving themselves of the chance to experience their other possible futures, simply because they are afraid to take responsibility for the most important thing of all: themselves.

So then, when are we going on that round-the-world trip?