
The Fear of Freedom
Why Escape is an Echo of Resurrection
I traveled a lot this year: From the United Arab Emirates, through Italy, with a brief stop in Germany, back to Georgia. In a remote cabin in the mountains, I’m reflecting on the past two years and what I can share with you. If you, like me, want to be free from constraints, I can show you where the pitfalls lie on the path to freedom. Lets have a look on what happened.
A review of the journey so far

Workplace in the mountains of Georgia, in a remote cabin.
Life in Germany before I started this journey was like a prison. I dressed how the media told me to. I lived how school had taught me. After years of searching for answers in universities, libraries, and travels I already trusted in the Lord. But my ass belonged to the system – and in some ways, it still does.
Because one year ago, after traveling through Europe and pausing in Georgia, I was on the brink of driving further to Armenia and Iran, and then on to Tibet by car. That was my intention, my inner call. What held me back? What made me look back at my old habits and bonds, seeking approval from others, chasing success, money, and women?
Redemption and true freedom were close. But I chose to step back into a box similar to my old one. The city had changed, the people around me were different. But parts of myself had not. I was still trying to adapt to the expectations of the old boxed life I had learned.
The walls of the prison are funny
I was and still am am a guy who fears release and being free, while at the same time refusing the invisible walls of his mental prison and daily life: working in a meaningless job, obeying orders, running for survival. Many people hate their own mental prison, yet they’re not seeking to escape from it either.
These walls of the prison are funny. When you are young, you hate them. But enough time passes, and you become dependent on them. For so many of us, freedom feels like exile to a world where we do not belong. Or so we think. So, when we find ourselves in that exile, the emptiness we face alone is not easy to bear.
With death, rebirth comes along

A quiet refuge in the mountains of Georgia.
So, I stayed in Georgia for the time being and didn’t continue on to Tibet, but instead enjoyed the small pleasures of life. I worked, loved, despaired, and tried to settle into what I was already familiar with. My journey took me to ultra-luxurious resorts in Abu Dhabi, to the beaches of Italy, and into the vastness of the North German Plain.
It was and still is a beautiful time, and I am grateful for every day surrounded by loving people with whom life is fun. But I do not give up hope. There is more to the world than meets the eye.
The echo of resurrection
Therefore, let’s take another look. Letting something or someone go you are in love with feels like dying, because we have to let go of what we are attached to. But with death, rebirth comes along and we become a new man, a man nobody ever laid eyes on before. Until that moment of birth, he did not exist.
An escape is an echo of resurrection. By taking on this new persona, we pass judgment on the old life we lived before.
Birds that are meant to fly

Freedom is very close in the mountains of Georgia.
I understand why so many of us got into this situation of self-imprisonment between wars, politics, and amusement. It is this attachment to things in the outside world that are so important to us, but as long as it is not true love, it will fade away anyway. I have a rough estimation of what it means to live in the world outside of the box in true freedom.
But most of all I know that some birds aren’t meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up rejoices.
But still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty now that they’re gone.
The kid became a man
Looking back on the way I was more than twenty years ago, this little boy full of hope and dreams, a young, naive kid who committed the terrible crime of not having the courage to live his dream of going on the voyage I started more than two years ago.
I want to talk to him. I want to try and talk some sense into him. Tell him the way things are. But I can’t. That kid is gone. And a man is left, stuck in the threshold of two worlds …
If you were in my place, what would you do?