Freedom. A word so powerful that it doesn’t really need anything beside it. But what does it actually mean when it is brought down from an idea into real life, among people and everyday experience? This is exactly what we, as a society, must work on the most and what we must teach children: to accept people as they are, and to understand that the measure of a human being is not found in skin color, religion, language, or money, but simply in whether we are good souls or not.
To understand freedom, I first had to understand how we look at one another. I grew up in a country that was almost completely homogeneous. White. When someone of a different race or religion appeared, it felt like pure exoticism to us children. I remember how we stared at those people - not out of hatred, but out of genuine curiosity. We wanted to know everything about them. We were not a racist society, because we had no real foundation for it. Even today, older generations often perceive people of different skin color through the same lens: as something distant and foreign, connecting them to images they once read about or saw on television.
Through my work, I later spent time with people from all over the world, and that shaped me further. I learned to look beyond appearance and see only the human being. I remember one moment in Budapest, during a business meeting with partners from China. At first, I was aware of our differences - different eyes, different physical features, different worlds behind us. And then, somewhere in the middle of the conversation, something quiet happened. I stopped noticing it. In front of me sat a human being. Just a human being. The boundary simply disappeared. In my world, there are no boundaries between people. Only against crime, injustice, and incivility. There, the walls are firm and unyielding.
But today, our everyday reality is changing dramatically. We are witnessing a wave of immigrants coming to work in Europe, while at the same time our young people are leaving in search of a better future abroad. Foreign languages are becoming part of everyday life, creating a natural tension in society. Yet change does not come without resistance. Both those who arrive and those who stay carry their own boundaries, only some of them are not visible on a map. Locals often resist because they must adapt to a new world of digital technology and dissolving borders that has dismantled the familiar framework of the past century. But adaptation, it seems, must go both ways. Those who have chosen to make this country their home, even temporarily, must respect it - its people, culture, and customs. They should adapt, or at least try to assimilate into their new home. And the society that receives them must learn how to live with change without fear of losing its own identity.
Yet perhaps the hardest truth in this entire story is that a person does not leave everything behind when they move from one country to another. You can change your address, language, or environment, but what has been woven into you for generations - perceptions, habits, fears, and traditions - travels with you. You leave one place, but you carry your inner world with you.
And then the question arises: if we do not always know how to live with differences on the outside, what about those within us?
Throughout history, struggles for freedom have always begun externally. But every external struggle, whether we like it or not, also opens an internal one. These historical struggles, such as the abolition of slavery and the commemoration of Juneteenth - June 19th - a day that does not only mark a historical moment but also serves as a reminder that freedom is a slow process, never fully guaranteed, make us wonder: how free is a human being today, really?
We spend centuries fighting for freedom from others. But the hardest battle has always been the one within. Because a person can be enslaved in a million different ways. The hardest forms of slavery are often not imposed from the outside, but those we carry within us, our addictions and inner cages that we struggle with throughout life.
And then I came across a thought by Gabor Maté that stays with you long after you read it: “Don’t ask why the addiction - ask where the wound is.” A person who drinks does not drink because they are thirsty, they drink to drown and silence the screaming in their mind. A person who overeats does not do so because they are hungry, but because food becomes a temporary shield, a way to feel safe. Every addiction is essentially an attempt to escape some unprocessed pain or fear.
Freedom from other people is one battle. Freedom from oneself is another. Being free from imposed internal or external addictions is an invaluable gift. True freedom means being clean, both privately and in the society we live in. It is that feeling when you can breathe fully, free from rigid frameworks, rules, and inherited patterns that no longer serve you.
The world is changing before our eyes, borders on maps are becoming thinner, and people are meeting and colliding in their differences more than ever. But the most important borders are not external ones. They are the ones within us. Because freedom is not only a political condition, nor merely a social ideal. It is an inner space where a person no longer runs - neither from others nor from themselves.
And only when we begin to look at our own wounds without fear, when we stop seeking escape in what destroys us and start understanding what hurts us, something quiet but decisive happens: we stop being imprisoned within ourselves.
And perhaps that is the only freedom that truly matters.
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