Someone once told me that everything in life has a cost attached to it. Obviously this isn't always a monetary thing, but it seems that everything today costs you a little something. If all things have a price then are we ever really free? And more importantly, is freedom really free because it seems there is a high cost to live.
Several months ago I became free. Well at least that's how it felt at the time. I was no longer held in place by anyone, except myself. In its own way it was very liberating to know that I was in charge of my own life again. I suppose I always was free, but I had put limits on myself because of other people. The other people in our lives can be good though, which is probably why we gravitate towards them. The positives outweigh the negatives. Still there was a realization that I no longer was limited by someone else or their needs and there was a sense of freedom that came with that. I'm not saying other people hold us back, although it's possible sometimes that they do. No it's more that we compromise in order to make two or more separate lives become one. Compromise can be a good thing because it opens us up to solutions that we may have not thought of otherwise. Like anything though there is a chance that you compromise yourself for someone else. I've known a lot of people who love being in a relationship and this isn't to say that by being in one you aren't free, but really your life is directly tied to someone else. When you don't have that attachment you potentially have more options to choose from. Well maybe not more, but different options anyway. The end of a relationship is often filled with pain, mostly emotional, but it's not limited to that. One of the first things a person does when a relationship ends (after they're done wallowing about how it ended in the first place) is start to do all the things that they couldn't do with the other person. It could be as small as changing what they eat or even when they eat. It could be as big as changing where they live. In some cases you don't want the freedom that comes from being alone. There is a comfort in having someone else around. So much so that any limitations are just accepted as the cost of doing business. Regardless of your relationship status, that is only a single aspect of freedom. Unless you happen to be Burgess Meredith in a Twilight Zone episode, you're always going to have to deal with people. They will ultimately dictate your choices in some way so in a way you'll never be free of them.
For most people one of the things that really limits any sense of freedom is money. It's the driving force for our society. Without money as a wage for work there is this fear that society would cease to function. If you think about it, if you weren't being paid for your job, would you still do it? Our current system is really just an elaborate barter system. For eight hours worth of work, the company will provide you with enough money to sustain your lifestyle (hopefully). There have been stories written about Utopian societies where people simply do their work for the betterment of the society. The idea is that it's in everyone's best interest to contribute so there is no need for monetary incentive. It's a nice idea, but it may never be realized. A lot of those stories never go into detail on how the society sustains itself. If you weren't required to work, but chose to, then what would you choose to do? Would there be any garbage men or office workers huddled into cubes? More likely there would be a lot of professional video game testers and television show watchers.
As I've mentioned before a lot of people today are locked into their current job because of salary requirements. They simply can't leave because doing so would mean they'd have to give up their lifestyle. That or something would be taken away. Even the type of job we can potentially get may be limited by a number of things. Education, experience, or location can all stop a person from getting a job they may want. When we're growing up we're told by our parents that we can be anything we want. Maybe that's just parental bias talking. Maybe it's true that at some point we could be anything we wanted and we're only limited by our own ambition. Somewhere along the way though we slowly start to have limitations put in place. These could be something we create or that are placed on us. Regardless of how they come about, once they're in place, it's really hard to break out. Ask someone who's attempted to change careers later in life how hard it was to make the transition. It's not impossible, but it's almost worse than entering the job market for the first time. By that time your experience could actually be something that holds you back, compared to helping you the way it did in the past.
When I was getting ready to graduate from college I had my mind set on going to the Pacific Northwest. I never liked the desert, but it was necessary to getting my education. So I started doing what I could to find opportunities to make my way out to some place I felt was more suited to me. At the time I thought having a newly completed education would be beneficial in my search. The problem was that I was here and I wanted to go there. Over there they had their own batch of new college graduates. There was a single opportunity to go to the area I wanted, but it would have meant a significant pay reduction compared to the local offers. Turns out the cost of being free of a location I didn't like was that I wouldn't be able to make as much money as I wanted. In the end I didn't take the offer because I had already become accustomed to a certain lifestyle, plus student loans weren't going to pay themselves on a lower salary. I still wonder though what would have happened if I had accepted the cost and gone. I would have been in a place that I liked and maybe with time the other pieces would have fallen into place. Sometimes that cost seems like too much. We rarely get second chances to try again though.
There will always be limitations to what we can do in our lives. Maybe part of our freedom comes from accepting certain ones while working to change others. I suppose in most cases a person is really only about three bad choices away from pitching everything in their life over the side anyway. In a sense we are never really free, but that's not a bad thing since being truly free means you've potentially gotten rid of everything that could ever hold you back, leaving you with nothing.
