What Does Freedom Mean to You?

There are thousands and thousands of people out there living lives of quiet, screaming desperation who work long, hard hours, at jobs they hate, to enable them to buy things they don’t need to impress people they don’t like.
– Nigel Marsh

My friend Adam Baker is an amazing young guy.

Adam was in his early 20′s when he suddenly realized that the script he’d been given by society really wasn’t in his best interest.  You know the script I’m talking about.  We all receive the same basic one.  It goes like this:

• work hard in high school so you can get into a good college
• borrow money so you can attend the good college so you can get a good job
• get an apartment and borrow money to fill it with stuff
• find a mate, get married, and then borrow more money for a house
• have some kids, borrow more money and get a bigger house

Do all of this, and someday you can enter the promised land of retirement.  Problem is, until you hit retirement, all of your money goes to pay your debt.  And if you make it to retirement age, you’ll probably find out that there’s no money left to retire on.  For most of us, we don’t figure out the deck is stacked against us until we get close to retirement age.

When Adam started his journey, he was in a position like a lot of us.  He was in debt and he was working to pay the bills.  But he asked himself one question, and the answer to that question changed his life.  The question?  What does freedom mean to me?  He wasn’t looking for a dictionary definition.  Instead, he wanted to know what his life would look like if he was truly free.

Last month, Adam was invited to share his story at the Tedx Conference in Asheville, NC.  a video of that presentation is attached.  In the video, Adam tells his story and issues a challenge to anyone who is still going to work every day to pay their bills.  In an upcoming post, I will give you some of my thoughts about the presentation.  I’ll also discuss how Adam’s message can be applied to my life.  To be honest, I’m struggling with Adam’s message at the moment and I will be hashing it out in my mind over the next few days.

Here’s Adam’s presentation: