Freedom isn't the absence of commitment

How learning to stay changed everything I believed about belonging

Oct 11, 2025

I’m sitting with three women at a networking dinner. Someone pulls a question from the list: “How do you want success to feel in your body? What’s the emotion?”.

One of them took a deep breath, moved her eyes around as if in search of an answer, and finally said: freedom.

The moment she said the word, it was as if I was now sitting in front of my younger self.

She was much younger, probably around her mid-twenties. She had recently moved from her country of origin to Portugal; she used to have a traditional job, and now she worked remotely. She talked about how she wanted to move around freely and get to know people from all corners. She wanted to feel free, but she couldn’t say what freedom looked like.

I felt it in my chest. But I didn’t think it was my place to tell her.

She would have to figure it out for herself, just like I did.

The Search for “My Place”

When I was in my 20s, I had a plan. I would travel the world until I would find “my place”. But my idea of finding this “home” meant jumping from city to city, and never committing to people or places, because doing so would hold me back from finding “my place”.

I wanted to find a place to belong but I also wanted to be free. I had this idea that happiness meant doing whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, going anywhere I wanted without constrains. I imagined that once I achieved that state, I would feel happy and fulfilled. I also thought freedom was an emotion.

I never felt like I belonged in the place that I was born. Which was exactly what pushed me to go out and explore the world and nurtured my drive for finding “my place”.

Today I know why I struggled to find my place: no matter where I went, there I was.

Freedom to belong

I wanted the freedom to be myself, but deep down I was afraid that attaching to others would take that freedom away.

So I kept searching for the right place or the right people where I could finally feel like my full self, yet I never stayed long enough to find it. I was stuck in a cycle.

I used to think that belonging meant conforming to expectations that didn’t align with who I was. I believed that to belong, I’d have to lose myself. And yet, I craved connection the way humans crave water. That tension led me into some really bad situations — in friendships, love, and work — where I tried to earn belonging at the cost of my own truth.

The obvious conclusion my younger, naive mind came to was that the way to avoid pain, and to stay free, was simply not to commit.

What it really means to belong

I wish I could say I knew what I was doing when I found my way out of that cycle. But I can only be grateful to life for having created the conditions that forced me to sit with myself. Literally.

I had been in this village for a year, and I was ready to move on to the next place.

So, I bought a ticket to Switzerland. But the day before my flight, my lawyer called telling me that getting on that plane would jeopardize my visa process, something I’d been waiting so long to sort out.

A month later, I booked another flight ticket to Italy. But COVID restrictions were put in place, and it stopped me from traveling once more.

A month after that, now for the third time, it was time to go to Hungary. But then a job opportunity came up that I couldn’t walk away from, and for the third time, a major force intervened that prevented me from leaving the city and the country I was in.

By that point, I was crying, angry and frustrated. I felt trapped, as if life itself is keeping me from being where I’m meant to be. I don’t even know where that place is yet, only that I’m being kept from finding it.

One day, while walking on the beach with slumped shoulders, empty eyes, and a heart full of questions, I had to cross some rocks. I walked over them trying to keep my balance, and bang I twisted my foot. Now, I couldn’t walk.

I had tried everything in my power to leave that town, and now I couldn’t even leave my apartment.

It was on a Sunday morning, having breakfast with friends — me doing the usual, complaining about life and how unfair and stuck I felt — when a friend looked at me and said:

“I’m not a spiritual person, but I have a friend in Norway. And if he was here listening to you, he would say that maybe the universe is trying to tell you something.”

I don’t know what happened in that moment, but suddenly something clicked. In a split second of time, I saw everything different. That made so much sense.

All I was trying to do for the last months was to be somewhere where I was not, and every single time life pulled me back. I resisted and fought so much, that it got to the point life needing to break my leg, so I could stay still.

And so I did. From that conversation onwards, I decided to accept that I was not going anywhere for a while, the world was closed, there was nowhere to visit, and I needed to heal my foot.

A few months earlier, I had met a guy who was very clear that he wanted a committed, serious relationship with me. But despite liking him, I had told him to expect nothing from me because I wouldn’t stay. I would leave to go traveling and find my place.

During these past 6 months before I twisted my foot, we had multiple conversations where I would tell him all the ways why we wouldn’t work out, and he kept telling me all the ways why we would. This guy had seen my worst. I had handed him a list of all the ways I was broken. And somehow, for reasons I couldn’t understand, he was still there.

But now, with my new setup, me locked in an apartment because I couldn’t walk, made me stop fighting life. I relaxed and started being present with what I had around me. I decided that there was nowhere to go for a while..

With the space I had created when I allowed myself to settle — even if just for a while — I start growing into that guy, and into that town, and into the people who lived there.

Two months after that Sunday breakfast, my lawyer called me saying that my papers were finally released. I have a Portuguese passport, and I’m free to go anywhere I want. But now, for the first time in my life, there’s nowhere else I want to go.

This year, I celebrate five years with that guy and six years since I arrived in that town.

And I finally understand that what I was looking for was never a place.

Commitment as liberation

A lot of things had to come together at once for that shift to happen. One of them was starting therapy again (by accident), with a therapist I randomly found. That’s where the real work began: learning to trust myself, to commit despite fear, to stay even when staying felt hard.

Because of the myths we often hear about what liberation looks like, I need to make something clear: it wasn’t that guy, place, or community that “saved” me. What saved me was my own choice. The decision to stay committed, even through the hard moments in therapy, in relationships, in community, and in this town.

In this journey I’ve been on over the past six years, what I realize now is that freedom is the ability to choose what to commit to — to stay, to build roots, to show up authentically with all our parts. Commitment doesn’t mean you’re trapped; it means that you have decided.

As I reflect, I realize that every decision comes with responsibility — and taking responsibility is frightening when there’s no self-trust.

But the truth is, there’s no real freedom without responsibility. You have to stand by your choices. Not deciding isn’t freedom. It’s a trap you build for yourself.

I have committed to a person, to a place, to my work, to a community. And I’ve never felt more free because I know each one of them was my choice.

The trap of endless options

One of the biggest illusions that keeps us from commitment is the trap of endless options. I know I fell into that trap for a while.

We often think that waiting for something “better” is about what’s in front of us — the job, the place, the person. But in truth, it reveals much more about how we relate to ourselves.

When we avoid commitment, we also avoid being seen. We mostly perform — trying to be the admirable one, the good one, the impressive one — while losing touch with who we really are.

As long as we keep our options open, we can hide behind possibility. It feels safer that way; we don’t have to risk showing our full selves.

When we notice the flaws in someone or in a place and immediately start imagining that there must be something “better” out there, what we’re really doing is resisting our own imperfection. We’re unwilling to accept or reveal the messy parts of ourselves.

Underneath it all, there’s a fear that choosing means closing doors forever, that commitment might lead to unbearable regret.

True belonging

What I didn’t understand back then was that belonging has nothing to do with finding the right place. It’s about being comfortable enough with yourself that you can show up as yourself.

For years, I thought I had to choose between either be myself or belong somewhere. I believed that attaching to people or places meant I’d have to shape-shift into whoever they needed me to be. So I kept moving, convinced that the right place would be the one where I could finally be accepted without having to “fit in”.

But I had it backwards.

I wasn’t going to belong anywhere as long as I kept hiding who I was. And I couldn’t commit because I didn’t trust myself to handle what came with that choice, the joy and the disappointment, the comfort and the conflict.

What I would tell me younger self

If I could sit in front of my younger self, just like I sat in front of that girl in that networking dinner, and tell her only one thing, this would be it:

“Freedom isn’t the absence of commitment. It’s choosing commitment without fear of losing yourself.”

If you could tell your younger self one thing about freedom or belonging, what would it be?

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