The Cost of the Luxury of Freedom

 When Independence Teaches You More Than Comfort Ever Could

Firstly, is freedom a luxury or a very fundamental virtue of humanity?

There are many versions and definitions of freedom, existing at different levels. But for a woman—especially for a girl from a humble middle-class family—freedom is a pair of wings. Wings you slowly learn to build on your own, to fly and explore an infinite universe of possibilities.

And when I say explore, I don’t mean fancy nights out, dates, or a glamorous life. I mean something far more basic. Making your own decisions. Speaking up and negotiating for yourself, even when you want to hide behind the pallu of your mother. Planning your outings, managing your finances, even though it’s easier to leave it to your father or brother.

No, this isn’t about being feminist or “taking power.” It’s about stretching yourself—building the muscles needed to become the person you always admired. A blend of your mother’s nurturing, your father’s strength, and the companionship of your siblings.

Today, I read a beautiful article on LinkedIn by a woman who recently embraced the solitary life of living away from home. It struck a deep personal chord because that’s exactly how I’ve felt over the last ten months. For the first time, I stepped out of the comfort zone of my home. It felt like a defining moment—me, on my own, ready to conquer the world. Perfect in theory. Well planned on paper.

Reality, however, arrived very differently.

It was a whole new world and the fastest crash course life could offer.

It begins with the basics—cleaning, washing, cooking, taking care of your health, building a routine. You no longer have your mother monitoring and scolding you for everything. Though you’re never truly alone—she’s always a call away, giving instructions—it’s the phase where you must pick yourself up and keep going.

You are responsible for yourself, in every sense. And it’s much harder than it looks. Self-discipline becomes a daily battle—something you start, break, and rebuild every few days because there’s always a “good reason” to slip. And all this is still just basic survival.

Then comes work life.

If you’re at the start of your career, you’ll resonate deeply with this—especially if you’ve been a full-time PhD scholar. After years of student life, stepping into a “real job” feels surreal. As much as you love your research and academic journey, somewhere deep inside you were desperate to be called a professional.

But once you’re here, nostalgia takes over.

You miss your research life. You keep sharing your academic adventures, drawing parallels between your past and present work—sometimes enough to mildly irritate your coworkers. It’s a phase that hits hard. You want to scream it out loud, yet it’s such a deeply personal evolution that others can’t always empathize with it at the intensity you feel—except knowing you’re a little crazy in your own way.

Before you even settle into this, life introduces the next module.

You’re never ready for it. There’s no warning. But it comes anyway.

I witnessed the death of a colleague I worked closely with. Friends lost their loved ones. Some slipped into depression. I dealt with my own health roller-coasters while managing work through it all. Life continued happening—to friends, to family. Add to this the FOMO, the exhaustion of constant travel, and the pressure to show up everywhere.

And one day, it randomly hits you—you did it all.

It is also the phase where we truly grow—where we travel, meet people, and begin to look at life through different lenses shaped by culture, geography, and social structures. Sometimes, you are the seeker; at other times, you are the one being sought. It is scary, yes, but also deeply humbling—to slowly grasp the vastness of humanity as a whole.

Especially in the role I am currently in, I have been allowed to witness the entire spectrum of lives and their possibilities. Each interaction, each story, quietly reshapes my understanding of the world and of myself. I am deeply grateful for the experiences I carry and for the version of myself that is slowly taking form through them.

It wasn’t easy. But the freedom and independence you longed for have slowly carved themselves into you. They’ve been building quietly, even when you had no time to notice. Even this mechanical survival-mode life is shaping a masterpiece out of you. It isn’t perfect, and it is definitely not bathed in glamorous light. Yet, it is no less than a fairy tale—one written not in grand moments, but in the extraordinary essence we absorb from the ordinary course of life.

Of course, it’s never the comfort of home or the magic of a mother who manages everything effortlessly. But we chose this path for a reason.

A ship is safest at anchor, but that’s not what it was built for.

Neither are we.

Maybe the journey is about moving from seeing freedom as a luxury to absorbing it as a basic essence of life. And that happens when we slowly convert FOMO – Fear of Missing Out into JOMO—the Joy of Missing Out.