This article discusses three interconnected threads related to the notion of ‘freedom.’ The first focuses on the personal experiences of the author, who left for the United States in 1990, when the country was considered an ideal of freedom. The second investigates the cultural conditioning of how freedom is understood in Poland and the USA, and the cognitive hypothesis indicating a universal way of experiencing freedom. The third talks about the state of freedom in the contemporary “free” world, where border walls are multiplying, and the social attitudes of Americans and Poles have been colored by a siege mentality and xenophobic populism.