Yesterday, I had a conversation with a virtual notary. It was a logistical necessity required to set up a new forwarding address from my virtual mailbox – just one of the many tools available to help facilitate digital nomad life in the modern age.
I’m chatting online with this notary, a Black woman – smart, capable, accomplished. And at some point, probably when she noted my international forwarding address in Colombia, conversation shifted to my life – nomadic solo traveling with my dog, living abroad, building something unconventional.
Her reaction was immediate:
“I could never do that.”
Not because she didn’t want to, but because she was afraid. Nebulous fears that lacked form or definition but were ominous nonetheless. Things like: What about safety? What about instability? What about the uncertainty of the unknown, and all the things that could possibly go wrong?
The reality is that these fears are not irrational, and I understood the hesitation completely. However, I also know from experience that these fears are not entirely accurate or grounded in anything real. Instead, they are learned, conditioned, and reinforced over time.
Honestly, what struck me wasn’t what she said, but what she assumed:
- Other countries are inherently more dangerous.
- Leaving the United States means losing stability.
- Staying in the States is the safer choice.
- And none of those things are universally true.
The Cost of Staying “Safe”
Safety, as it is often defined, comes with trade-offs: limited mobility, limited perspective, limited experience. And, in truth, sometimes what we call safety is actually just familiarity. Sadly, many people are holding onto familiarity even when that familiarity isn’t serving us.
Here’s the thing: Traveling, living abroad, building a life outside the U.S. – none of it is risk-free. But neither is staying. The difference is that one feels known while the other feels uncertain, and we tend to overestimate the danger of the unknown while minimizing or dismissing the severity of issues with what we know. For example, it never ceases to amaze me how United States citizens will worry over the safety of other countries while living in the country with the highest rates of gun violence in the world. By far. The United States also suffers uncharacteristically high levels of homelessness, poverty, food insecurity, and water inaccessibility when compared to the rest of the “developed” world, but citizens routinely overlook these issues in American society while pointing them out in that of other countries. I mean, my response to friends back home who incredulously asked me if I could safely drink the water in Costa Rica was, “Yes, the water here is fine…Can they drink the water in Flint yet?”
What I Want Her to Understand
At the end of the day, you don’t have to do what I’m doing. Not everyone is going to give up all their worldly possessions beyond what can comfortably fit into a couple of suitcases and embark on a “Carmen San Diego” style galivant around the world with their dog. But you should question the belief that you can’t because, generally, that belief isn’t based on lived experience, actual data, or any level of informed understanding. Instead, it’s based on fear, (often false) narratives, and secondhand assumptions.
Once we start to question these premises, the real question shifts from “Is this scary?” to “Is this actually impossible—or just unfamiliar?”
At some point, we must be honest with ourselves about what we’re calling “safety.” If the place we’re defending is already failing us in measurable, visible ways, then the question isn’t whether leaving is risky, but whether staying has simply been normalized. Once you see that clearly, it becomes a lot harder to hide behind fear that was never fully yours to begin with.
