For lots of people, moving to college seems like total freedom: no parents, unlimited Xbox, and co-ed bathrooms! But college is still a campus-shaped bubble where meals arrive with the swipe of a card that someone else probably paid for, where you’ve got to live by the rules of the syllabus if you want to pass.
Many people instinctively think large sums of money lead to limitless freedom and happiness. While that may be true, try to think instead about what it is you’d do with an unlimited supply of money. What would it make easier, specifically? What would you do if money were no object? How would you spend your time? There’s your answer. If you struggle to decide, instead of focusing on an ideal day–which, let’s face it, we’d probably all spend at the beach–Try to think of your ideal week. After a whole week on the beach, we’d all probably end up sunburned and bored. What kind of work would you do? When would you do it? Where?
Again, it’s easy to blame money for our problems: “If only I had the money, I could get that new guitar and my band would be great,” we say, making excuses for why we’re not signed to a lucrative record deal, forgetting that a new guitar has nothing to do with your ability to write a catchy melody, play well, and work hard on stage. If only you had the money, it’s true, you could travel to Thailand, or write novels all day, or spend all your time gardening heirloom hot peppers. But it’s probably not money that’s really keeping you from doing those things–it’s you giving up on the hand you’ve been dealt, and folding the cards.
Say you decided your ideal life involves having a small and loving family, who leads a quiet life in the country growing vegetables. If that would give you the type of freedom you desire, what can you do now that will actively move you toward that reality? In the long term, you might start studying permaculture, or wildlife management, or some other field that would involve work in the natural world. Where might you like to own a home? Would you build your own house or buy one? What do you need to save to make it a reality? In the short-term, you might check out rural co-ops or communes you could visit and exchange work for room and board. Or check out World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF), a program that lets you volunteer on organic farms around the world, getting experience.
Be careful of constantly comparing yourself to other people if it makes you get down on yourself. Remember, you never know what hardships others really face, only the outside view. Competition can be good for some people and terrible for others. Know yourself and focus on your own life. Worry about your own backyard.
Try to actively expand the list of things you can do by yourself. While it’s true you can take your car into the shop every time a light goes out, you’ll save money and become more self-reliant if you learn to perform a basic tune-up. Alternatively, it’s also good to accept help and learn to recognize when you need it. Being self-reliant doesn’t mean being foolish and ignorant of your abilities. If you don’t know how to change your car tire, learn how, so you can become more free and less reliant on others in the future. But in the moment, be honest with yourself.
Ideally, if you think about these things as a Venn diagram, they should look as close as possible like a single circle, overlapping almost entirely if you’ve structured your life in an ideal way. If what you need and what you want line-up, you’ll be living the happy and free life you want to lead. What might you change to realign the diagram?[4] X Research source Try to create a budget to account for all your needs and as much want as possible to live sustainably. The less you have to worry about money–the less you have to think about it at all–the better off and the more free you’ll be.
How you choose to define work might be complicated. Plenty of people “work” during the day doing something that may or may not define their calling in life. Walt Whitman was an ambulance driver, but he also wrote some of the greatest American poems ever written. If your ideal life involves working only 15 or 20 hours a week, it might be difficult to sustain that life in Manhattan or Los Angeles. Prioritize the various aspects of your ideal life. If the desire to live in a cultural hub outweighs your desire to work less, get multiple jobs, 8 roommates, and move to the Big Apple. If your time is more precious to you, find somewhere the cost of living is cheap and you’ll have your time.
Lastly remember that in order to achieve your biggest dreams you need to have faith in yourself. Always believe you can do it, cause at the end of the day the person who says they can’t and the person who says they can will probably both be right. You are what you believe.
Sometimes, allowing yourself to break small rules of protocol or tact can be a good way of asserting your freedom in the world. Play what you want on the jukebox, even if the other bar patrons don’t want all 11 minutes of “Heard it Through the Grapevine. "
Traveling can be big or small. You don’t have to hitchhike to South America to travel and experience something new. Visit new parts of town you’ve never visited, or explore the small town next to yours. Go somewhere you don’t know anyone and learn everything you can. If it’s new to you, Brooklyn might as well be Crawfordsville.
Be careful of becoming a slave to your ideal version of yourself. It’s easy to say, “Everything will be better after I graduate” or “Everything will be better after I get this project done” or “Everything will be better when I move to Portland. " Will it? How can you be free in spite of your challenges? How can you be free right now, where you live, right this second? How can you change your environment for the better?[7] X Research source
