The frigid Maine air cut like a knife across my exposed face. Harbor lights glistened in the setting sun as I pulled my jacket tighter, a hint of fall lingering over the bustling coastal town.
It was a Friday night on Commercial Street in downtown Portland, the sidewalks packed with tourists like sardines in a can.
I had just stepped off the ferry from Peak’s Island and was trying to catch up with my family who were walking ahead of me. I zigzagged in and out of swarming people and happened to glance to my right… and I saw it.
The old beat-up van was the color of burnt shamrock green, and parked on the street illegally. It looked like it had been there for quite some time. An old man with a withered beard sat in the front seat. He looked dirty and scruffy, a vagabond drifter just trying to find his way in this lonesome world. Dead eyes stared out at me from the hollows of his face. I wondered what his story was. We all have stories, each one unique, mysterious and worth writing a book about. I find people’s journeys fascinating, but that’s for another day.
All the windows of the van had been blacked out and covered with signs. The one that had caught my attention was labeled in bold white letters with a midnight background.
It read: Freedom isn’t free.
That got me to thinking. If you achieve FI, are you really free?
Have you ever asked yourself that question? Or are you too locked in on your goal to contemplate it?
Because I have an answer for you:
Freedom isn’t Free.
It’s true. Because no matter what you do, there are still rules to the game. You can bend them to your advantage, but that doesn’t change the fact that they exist.
To live is to be a player.
Unfortunately, we don’t get a choice in this. And make no mistake, there is a score card: you will be judged on how you play.
Often times we like to play make believe. We pretend that the rules don’t exist. If I just do this or that, then I am free, we pontificate. But when we look deeper. When we get really curious and scrounge underneath the lid, we find the truth. And most of the time, it’s better off left alone.
Life is a game with levels.
But if you want to wake up, if you want to play to your potential, then you need to realize that there are different levels to the game.
Everyone seems to think that reaching your FI number, hitting your FI mark is freedom. But it’s not. You’re still living in the illusion. All that you have done is transcended to another level of the game of life.
You still answer to the bank, bills, taxes, society. You’re not exempt or immune. The same problems you’ve always had, build up. Because you are still you. There’s no running from yourself. The list goes on and on…
Nothing has really changed that much because you still have to play by the rules. There is no beating it. At some point you have to accept that.
Your mind is the game. You have to master yourself to find true freedom.
True freedom in the physical sense can’t be found today because the world is connected. But there is a way to win at any level of the game.
The key is inside of us all. And I’m not talking about divine intervention or anything like that. I’m talking about the power of perception.
All it takes is the slightest shift in consciousness and anything can be accomplished. A mental alteration can give you a new pair of glasses and change your entire worldview.
When we stop playing a finite game and change it to an infinite one, any piece on the board is at your disposal.
Yet, I think we get so lost in the details, it’s hard not to impose our own thoughts, values and will on other people, whether we are aware of it or not. The answer is so simple, but probably the hardest of all to implement.
We need to remind ourselves there is a grander scheme at play than our own little slice of reality.
I see this written on almost every FI blog in some form or another: “Reach financial independence and you can do whatever you want.”
Do you agree with this? Are you someone who has written it yourself?
Answering it myself, no. I don’t think you can do whatever you want even with FI, as I’ve explained above.
Whether chains are physical or invisible, you can still feel the weight of them pulling down on you.
There are always limits – but when it comes to these, they are self-imposed. There will always be someone with just a little bit more and a little bit less.
But you don’t need to pay attention to this. You don’t have to get lost in the details like everyone else. Every piece of life doesn’t need to be defined. We can live under an all-encompassing umbrella that is quiet financial independence: the pursuit of any and all dreams.
And you should dream, but know why you’re dreaming. Don’t be reaching for someone else’s or when you get there, you’ll be crushed to learn you put that ladder up against the wrong wall. Is it what you think you want – i.e. this is what other people want, this is what society wants – or is it what YOU truly want?
There’s a difference, and you need to understand it before it is too late.
If you can learn to see the underlying rules, then you can begin to shift your perspective into a winning mentality. Slightly alter your consciousness, and you begin to change your game – you can start to follow your own bliss.
The more you can practice this the more you will learn what price you are willing to pay?
Because never elude yourself: freedom isn’t free. Even with reaching FI.
And the game must go on…
-Q-FI
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