Free to Range

I don’t want anything for free. I don’t necessarily want things to be easy. And I don’t care much about being clean.

I want to travel. I want to drink beer with and meet people from places I’m unfamiliar with.

I want to own very little, and spend as little time as possible working for the things I own. I would prefer to spend my money on restaurants and national parks and good beer and doing things, not accumulating them.

Most of all, I want to be free. Free from any preconceived ideas as to what we should be doing with our lives. Free from living for the promise of the next life, which all too often seems like a way to escape our obligations to live fully in this one. Free from the surreality of politics, at the government and workplace levels, but even from those that simply living in a neighborhood or having friends born of locational convenience create. That type of freedom has a cost, though. It pulls at the heart to never be content, and that can leave you feeling short on happiness.

Not spending money means doing things yourself, and that costs time. But I’d rather spend my time busting my knuckles up and walking around in grease-laden pants than trading it for more money. Only one can teach you the only lesson worth learning in life, self-preservation. To live outside of the security of loads of money, but then again, to actually have time to live.

Still, it’s impossible at some point to find complete, unadulterated freedom. A girlfriend is nice. I love my kids. They create a happiness that isn’t born of money but also diminishes the amount of freedom I truly have.

Even rolling stones need a little moss now and then, I suppose. It helps to make the downhills a little easier.