A space-time freedom continuum

Spoiler 1: This has nothing to do with science! Signs, maybe.

Spoiler 2: This has a lot of quotes. What can I say, smart people have already framed things so well. 

I got an interesting response to Change Signalling – Sriks7 asked me what are the values based metrics you are thinking of for yourself? He also mentioned that in his case, they are seen to boil down to where to spend your attention and time. I can relate to that. In the words of Dylan, “A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.” I have noticed that my overall sense of well-being goes up when I allow myself unstructured time. I watch random things, torture D and twitter with bad wordplay, listen to music, and sometimes just watch clouds float. The last one is slightly more dynamic than paint drying. 🙂

But my answer would have at least one more layer.  Though time is definitely a key element here, I think of it being part of a broader umbrella – freedom. My working definition of freedom is related to one of my favourite quotes “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” ~ Viktor E. Frankl. Freedom, to me, is that space – to be able to choose a response that I can live with, always. Or, to paraphrase a bunch of Jean-Paul Sartre’s quotes, freedom is nothing but the existence of our will.

As I wrote earlier, one approach that I have used is to reduce the stimuli. But increasingly, I find that there’s a limit to that.”The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot for ever fence it out.” ~J.R.R.Tolkien. My introspection therefore, has been in the direction of the response. I have found that my power to choose a response depends on how secure I feel. I further explored this “security” and realised that it boiled down to money. It seems like when I can afford it, and that’s almost literal, I am nice to those around me. When I feel that our financial independence plan is threatened, I tend to react badly. It doesn’t help that I am blessed with a scarcity mindset.

My belief is that by the time we are ready to activate the plan, I would have an abundance mindset. That is based on the changes I have seen in myself in the last few years. But I am also reasonably sure, from experience, that though there are these small wins that happen organically on the way, a mindset switch requires effort. A couple of challenges are immediately visible. One, since I do have a few more years of a full-time professional life left, there are trade-offs on a daily basis, and they require a balancing act between knowing who I am and being who I need to be. The challenge is being rooted on the first while executing the second. Two, while the ego might have been reasonably tamed, there is self image which has its own demands. In this dual tussle, there are choices and actions that might derail me.

When, between changing circumstances and myself, I have learned to increase that space (in my earlier definition) I’d have achieved the freedom I desire. I do wonder about Loki’s (surprisingly) deep thought though – “Freedom is life’s great lie. Once you accept that, in your heart, you will know peace.”