By Kenneth Stepp
Real freedom… What does that mean to you? I once wrote about the freedom of love. What I wrote about was actually the freedom that comes with real love. Unconditional love. I feel I’ve only loved one person unconditionally in my life and that has recently changed. I always saw her as perfect. But there are chinks in that armor now so maybe it was a more common love. I’m trying to understand it completely and will probably overthink it for a while.
You see, unconditional love is all about freedom. Freedom to be you. Most have never experienced that so they dilute what love is and call something real love that isn’t love at all. A strong attraction, a half view of someone on the internet, a great situation, etc. But real love allows us to be ourselves without fear of judgment. Once I see judgy a switch gets flipped in my heart. This is what I am experiencing now. I guess my blinders were bigger than they should have been.
But today instead of dredging up something from my past I wanted to talk about real freedom. It’s important if you are single and looking for forever. You see without the freedom to be who you really are, you will always be who you think they want you to be. That means you are pretending and that is the opposite of freedom. That’s being someone you are not. They love the act, not the person. That cannot last forever. But I am surprised at how long that lasts in some cases.
I was at an event today and was speaking with a new friend and the subject of freedom came up. Freedom is important to me. Because of this I have given freedom a lot of thought and came up with three things that if we can break through them they will give us great freedom.
The first is freedom from money. That sounds weird in a consumer driven country like ours. I had wealth for decades but money never motivated me. It was just easy for me to make a lot of money. I’m sure looking from the outside in that it looked like it mattered to me. It just didn’t. I made seven figures a year and none of it mattered. I gave away a lot. There is power in letting go of it. Today I realize money matters but limiting my need for money is key in my life.
The next form of freedom comes from not caring what others think. You see, I have to live my life. Why should what someone other than me thinks of me matter to me? I barely understand why it matters to them. But I am infinitely more happy than they will ever be because I’m only concerned with my life, not theirs. Call it twice as happy since I worry about half as much.
Lastly and most unknown is this. I do not need to be heard. If someone thinks a certain way or has certain opinions I really don’t have the urge to explain mine to them. You see they have chosen what to believe and they have told themselves that they want these opinions in their head. I no longer feel the need to add my thoughts to theirs.
If you’ve been reading me for a while you will see that this isn’t my normal subject but it all ties into being single and finding your person, or at least your people. The freedom from the view of love is that you can remain yourself and those who fit into your life will eventually find you. That’s real love of course. But adding to this is a few thoughts on how to get along with others while being free so that you actually touch more people in your life. If you are a math person like me then you know two things. Your odds increase and you’ll live a much happier life.
Freedom is freedom. It also brings peace
