I grew up in Moldova, a country people often leave.

We leave for jobs, safety, education, and a chance at something more stable than the uncertainty we live with. From a young age, I saw departure as progress. Like many from small countries far from the spotlight of global power, I believed escape was progress. I internalized the idea that my country was broken, in ways that felt too deep to fix, with corruption, inequality, and a sense of stagnation that seemed woven into daily life. I held on to the idea that leaving was the first step toward becoming someone.

So I left, carrying with me the quiet hope that somewhere else, I could finally breathe freely. When I moved to the West for school, I expected a place where things simply worked, where institutions were fair, systems transparent, and progress real. Where diversity, dignity, and opportunity remained central throughout. I had internalized that the West offered everything that my home country could not offer. But in time, the cracks began to show. And they were not so different from the ones I had left behind. The system was no less flawed, it was just better at hiding its failures.

And this is where the Achilles’ heel comes in, not just mine, but perhaps all of ours.

Idealizing a place can quietly blind us to its flaws, even as it mirrors the very injustices we hoped to leave behind. I thought I was escaping inequality and dysfunction, but I found them again, just dressed differently, in subtler, more refined forms. I traded one broken system for another, cloaked in a different vocabulary. It is tempting to believe that progress and inclusion lead to real change, but I learned that sophistication does not make a system immune to flaws.

Every society has its weak points, and the myth of Western superiority is one of them.

I bought into that myth, more than I would like to admit. When we romanticize new systems, we risk overlooking the injustices they quietly sustain. We stop asking hard questions. We fail to see that behind even the strongest facades, something fragile often lies just beneath the surface. Later, at NYU Abu Dhabi, surrounded by students from across the world, I encountered a new set of contradictions. Workers clean the spaces where we debate ethics. We speak of justice in rooms constructed by those excluded from its promises. And yet, there is resistance here too, with people trying to expose the cracks and make them more visible.

This campus lives in an in-between space, caught between East and West, the Global North and South, comfort and struggle. I sit in classrooms with people who grew up under military occupation, alongside others whose families are deeply tied to the very systems we question. Some of my peers have never had the option to leave home, while others move through borders with ease. Being surrounded by this kind of contrast has pushed me to examine my beliefs more closely.

Realizing all this did not make me fall in love with my home country overnight. It didn’t erase the frustration or the reasons I left. But it did make me rethink the whole idea of escape. What if the real Achilles’ heel is the myth of perfect systems? What if every institution, no matter how polished, carries with it the same old wrongs it claims to fight?

What if some countries have not solved injustice at all, they have just gotten really good at the performance of fairness?

Both my home and the places I have moved through are flawed. Both are also full of thoughtful, resilient people working to build something better. That, more than any flag or passport, is what gives me hope. Leaving did not stop me from criticizing where I am from, it just taught me that doing it without care can slip into something harsh and unfair. That putting other places on a pedestal can slowly feel like erasing parts of yourself, and that no matter how shiny or well-run a place looks from the outside, injustice still finds a way in.

I still believe in leaving home, but not as a way to escape. Leaving offers perspective, a chance to see things more clearly, to notice the cracks in every system, including the one I came from and the ones I once thought were flawless.

And maybe that is what progress really is: not running away, but having the courage to face the world as it is. To hold its contradictions without looking away.

Achilles did not fall because of a weakness, he fell because he believed he was invincible. And in many ways, so do we.