The Illusion Of Freedom

Time isn’t best hoarded for yourself.

“I wish everyone could get rich and famous and get everything they ever dreamed for, so they can see that’s not the answer.” – Jim Carrey

At a young age, every kid kills for freedom. The desire starts in childhood when you must receive your parents’, or guardians’, approval or help before doing most things. They take you to a football game or drive you to a friend’s house. You are too young to exist independently. As you get older, your parents begin to unshackle the restraints, but your desire for freedom accelerates faster than the independence you are allowed. You think you should be able to hang out with friends without telling your parents or spend the night at someone’s house your parents don’t know, but your parents disagree. It expedites the craving for freedom outside of your parents’ watch.

Pretty soon, you can drive. It is a huge milestone. The scaffolding of trust has risen much to your delight. You may need to be home at a certain time, but if you behave, you don’t need to tell your parents everywhere you go. Soon, you leave for college. Freedom tastes as sweet as advertised. Free from the reigns of your parents, you choose whether you attend class, go to the bars and clubs on Thursday night with no curfew, and sleep in with no judgment. Your younger self relishes in it. Every young adult wonders if life is always this sweet? It appears to only improve when you graduate college and enter the professional world. You get a full-time job, and not only do you have freedom, but you finally have money! No longer are you the broke college kid. Life seems like a dream. You wonder if freedom is what I have been chasing after this whole time?

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However, dreams must meet reality. The shininess of the new career and freedom begins to lose its luster. The real world begins to take shape. You spiral into a quarter-life crisis wondering if this is what you have worked for your whole life? You question your career, your path, and your future. You grow frustrated, exhausted, and angry. Life was supposed to be good.

After beginning my career, I wanted to break free from the restraints of corporate America. Most young people experience something similar. I thought the solution to my problems was working for myself. In my journal, I plotted my path to break free from the corporate grind. I needed to reclaim the freedom that I had lost.

I failed to realize that ultimate freedom is an illusion. I didn’t want freedom; I needed to work on something that aligned better with my passions. I didn’t need alone time; I needed to spend more time on work I enjoyed with people I respected. I didn’t need to be 23 working alone. I needed to be 23 surrounded by a great work culture.

I believed I desired more freedom, but it was an illusion. David Brooks, an American author, says,

“If you ask people at the end of their lives what made them happy, it was not self-sufficiency; it was the moments when they were utterly dependent on somebody else and somebody else was utterly dependent on them.”

We aren’t striving for freedom. It is a lie that childhood fabricates. Our younger selves think we know how the world works. But with each personal experience, every piece of wisdom your parents imparted on you starts to become true. Your eyes begin to open. You weren’t some revolutionary who could fight on their own. You needed your parents to help navigate this unknown world. The need for complete independence was a façade. You start to realize that sacrificing freedom is worthwhile and you are utterly dependent on others. You can’t be completely free.

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Everything good in life comes from sacrificing freedom. It is a currency to be spent. Humans love to be tied down by family, friends, relationships, and commitment. In Meditations for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman explains,

“You can push your life a little further in the direction of the second, a communal sort of freedom. For one thing, you can make the kind of commitments that remove flexibility from your schedule in exchange for the rewards of community”

Having a kid’s soccer game on the calendar, a friend's dinner where you laugh so hard you almost spit out your food, or being a part of a local gym are these communal sorts of freedom. Not always needing a death grip on your time and chasing endless freedom with an optimized schedule. If you always save your freedom for more optionality, it will end with nothing.

Perhaps it is a dead horse, but the FIRE (Financial Independent Retire Early) movement is living proof. People reach their desired net worth to only reflect on the past 20 years of the prioritization of freedom at the sacrifice of relationships, love, and other commitments with disgust.

Image courtesy of Reddit.

The only thing ultimate freedom brought them was the realization that it wasn’t what they wanted. They believe if I could be free, rich, and maybe famous, I might get what I want. But too often they realize, it was an illusion and complete freedom was not the answer. Time isn’t best hoarded for yourself. Hopefully, it doesn’t take being rich, free, and famous for us to realize this.

-Scantron

Appreciate you for reading.