Episode 70. Freedom Comes from Limitations

What in life deserves our time and attention and what things don't. I hope that as we consider that question along with other topics on this show, that we can all learn to live our lives just a little more intentionally. This is Seth Roberts. Thanks for joining me on Skipping Stones "Freedom Comes from Limitations."

Freedom seems like the ability for us to do whatever we want. But that's often the very thing that enslaves us at this moment. I kind of want to check my phone, but is that freedom or compulsion? What most of us like to call freedom is more of a curated form of voluntary enslavement. So, I noticed something a while back.

I really like Salsa Verde flavored Dorito chips. I can eat an entire bag of those chips. But I noticed that I didn't actually want to eat an entire bag of chips. Every time I tried to stop, I immediately wanted more. In a sense, those chips might be the most unsatisfying snack on the planet, and there's just something wrong when a food item or something else in life cannot even leave you satisfied for more than five seconds after you stop eating it.

Likewise. Years ago, when I would finally get my kids down to bed at the end of the night, my ex and I would immediately turn on the tv, and it seemed like our plan of only ever watching just a couple of episodes, always turned into watching three or maybe four each night. And somehow, I still would go to bed feeling unresolved.

Not only that, but I could watch multiple seasons of a show and still feel like nothing ever resolved and I kept going back. The amount of time I have spent doing things that left me feeling worse off than I was before is astounding. And how can we call that freedom? I think if someone could show us how many hours of our life we spent on things meant to pass the time, we would all feel just a little depressed to find out how much time we actually spent on things we never really wanted to do.

We mistake, distraction for rest, and we still wonder why we feel more tired. Ironically, freedom seems to come more from what we choose not to do, rather than the things we do choose to do. Real freedom is not doing whatever you want. It's the power to say no to the things that diminish you. It is the ability for us to pursue higher order desires unencumbered.

Sometimes we get so hooked on the sugary sweet things of life that we lose the ability to taste the more subtle and nuanced flavors that are available to us. I think we fear boredom and blandness so much. That we will do nearly anything to avoid them, but to overcome boredom and blandness. It is less about finding something more exciting and more about allowing ourselves to adapt.

I feel no more bored than I did when I was placating myself with constant media consumption. The difference now is that I can finally taste the nuanced flavors of life again for some time now to the best of my ability. I've tried to remove the things from my life that don't contribute to the things I've decided I want out of life.

As a consequence, I have a lot more moments of being just a little bored, but since a lot of my old-time passing pursuits are off the table now, I experience. Just enough boredom in life that the things I actually want to be doing are now interesting enough for me to actually pursue. One of the best things my dad ever did for me when I was a kid was, he offered me a hundred dollars if I could go a year without eating candy.

I don't think he actually thought I'd do it, but I was particularly money motivated as a child, and so I did. It taught me that I did not have to be a slave to the things I thought I needed. It was a lesson I've used over and over again in my life. I see people in my life now that feel completely helpless to their desires.

Some of them consciously eat terrible food and tell me that they would rather die young and be happy than live a life without their favorite foods. But I think to myself, how on earth is that making them happier? My food may be less flavorful now than it used to be, but would you believe it? My life is still good.

Not only good, but better today. I get as much satisfaction out of my less exciting food as I did from eating all of the tasty junk food available when I was younger, and as an added bonus, I'm healthier on top of having satisfying meals all of the time. For all the noise we make about freedom, it seems like most of us choose to live as slaves.

We live as slaves to food slaves, to media slaves, to greed, slaves to ambition slaves to our fear. We're driven by these things, and all the while we tell ourselves that our actions are our choice. When really, we're compelled to do those things, it's almost as if we're getting whipped, except instead of being the victim to someone else, we're the victim to ourselves.

Taking the easy route over and over when we get bored or sad or unhappy, creates habits, and those habits ultimately end up being the prison bars that keep us trapped. We like to mistake freedom for being able to do what we want, but freedom is the ability to do what we consciously decide, not necessarily what we want.

Freedom doesn't come from doing whatever you want. It comes from knowing what matters and saying no to everything that doesn't. It isn't the options you have in front of you that define your life. But the ones that you choose to walk away from, this is Skipping Stones - "Freedom Comes from Limitations." You can find this podcast anywhere you choose to listen to podcasts.

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