Break Free of the Chains
Ciao Bella,
On a scale of 1 to 10 how much freedom do you have in your life overall?
How much freedom in your job? How much freedom in your home? How about within your extended family? Your friends? In the public arena of walking down the streets, crossing when you want to?
How much do you value freedom? Would you consider it one of your life pilars? What freedoms would have to be taken away from you to fight for them? What freedoms are you willing to give up in order to strengthen other freedoms?
Being from a country that prides itself on freedom, it is curious as to how often people take it for granted and fail to recognize the freedoms available to them.
At the same time, we’ve grown up in systems and structures that were anything but freedom. We are required to attend school through 16 years old in most states. Corporate America then has us shackled into attending a 4 year university if we want to get a consistent, solid paying job with benefits. Once a part of Corporate America, we are given a very explicit job description to follow. Someone else has created these structures so their life is more free, yet the lives below them become more rigid.
Those on the top delegate out responsibility to ensure freedom is maintained. Those on the bottom give up their freedoms for security.
This isn’t to say we are against educating oneself or attending a higher education or even considering a job in Corporate America. It is only to remind ourselves to recognize the freedoms that people are giving up in living in the lower rungs within these systems. They are giving up freedoms to ensure they have consistencies and safeties.
Traveling abroad we’ve found as an incredible tool in analyzing our freedoms. It offers us a prism from which to see freedom. We see how other countries have complete freedoms in living out their day-to-day lives, drinking alcohol in the streets, or very little freedoms due to class systems (aristocracies) or not being able to spit on the sidewalk.
We realize breaking free of the chains is different for each of us.
These abroad experiences help solidify our definition of what it means to be personally free, how much it means to us, and, most importantly, to appreciate or fight for it.
You’ve been given one Earth. Live, travel, work and study about it.
[...] They’ve chained you up as I note in the e-book. They’ve left you believing progress is only made by sitting in a cubicle with your head down patiently waiting for the day your boss calls you into the office and offers you a promotion. Yes, a promotion to manage others with their head down in a cubicle perfecting Excel. Patiently or not so patiently waiting until your bank account reaches some fixed number, this will be the day. Then you can retire and do all that you have withheld from doing. Sure going abroad has its uncertainties, but so does staying in that cubicle. [...]