Freedom is not expected overnight so it will need to happen in stages. In no particular order here are the intended stages to be undertaken:
- Find a slower place to live
- Stop exchanging time for money
Our small family currently lives in the Metro Vancouver area in Canada. I’ve lived here since 1976 when I was only 6 years old. I loved growing up here. The whole region was just over 1 million people at the time so for me it was never a small town but it felt safe and easy to get around. The access to outdoor adventures in the North Shore mountains and beyond was unparalleled and the winter climate is much more mild than the vast majority of the rest of Canada. It does come by the nickname ‘Rain City’ and the ‘Wet Coast’ quite honestly though.
Today Vancouver is 2.5 million strong and the vibe has changed. For Mrs. Freedom and I it has become too busy, too big, and too difficult to get around. It doesn’t feel as safe as it once did. We no longer visit the mountains as before as the trade off of battling traffic to get there makes it less attractive and there’s often little solitude to be found in the North Shore forests. To add to this, the cost of living has gone through the roof in large part due to the explosion of real estate prices. In short, I once thought I would never live anywhere else and now I find myself longing to live almost anywhere smaller, slower, and quieter. Mrs. Freedom is on the same page – in fact, she’s even more eager than I.
There are so many topics I want to cover and so much in my head that at this point it’s hard for me to stay on a clear path with one concise topic per blog post. That definitely bit me in my previous (first) post. I want to add some other thoughts here.
My quest is to break the shackles of my current life and find the deep happiness and contentedness that currently often eludes me. Freedom from debt slavery, freedom from the consequences of some of my previous decisions, freedom from anxiety as much as is reasonably possible, and yes, financial freedom as I choose to define it.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary:
freedom
1. The power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants
1.1 Absence of subjection to foreign domination or despotic government
1.2 The power of self-determination attributed to the will; the quality of being independent of fate or necessity
2. The state of not being imprisoned or enslaved
2.1 The state of being unrestricted and able to move easily
This is all fine and good however the concept of freedom and some of the above definitions highly contextual are open to the interpretation of the reader. In effect, one person’s freedom is another person’s imprisonment.