12/13/2025
This photo was taken at Mount Everest Base Camp. Everyone was lining up to get pictures with Everest in the background, and our guide pulled us aside and said very clearly, don’t take pictures with flags. He told us the year before someone did that and their passport was blacklisted for visiting China.
I noticed this rock with a Chinese flag painted on it and figured, well, I guess this is the one flag you’re allowed to stand in front of. So I took the picture.
It got me thinking about something I don’t think people always realize. Governments can be messed up. Corporations can be messed up. There are real problems everywhere. But the amount of time we spend in the U.S. focusing on what we think we’re not allowed to do sometimes blinds us to how much freedom we actually have.
Here, you can hold up any flag you want. People protest with other countries’ flags all the time. Nothing happens. You can criticize the president. You can say something unpopular. And if something does go sideways, you can get counsel, fight it, and win.
I’m not saying we don’t have problems or that people should stop pointing them out. I just think sometimes the ratio is off. If you spend the majority of your time focused on what you dislike or what you think is holding you back, you miss how much latitude you actually have to live, speak, and move freely here.
