I enjoyed this post, although I don’t necessarily think sucess is essentially what is taking our freedom away. Firstly, what do you understand by sucess? I believe it might be highly subjective.
Do you think success is economical, professional, intellectual...? Is it a static goal or is it a journey? That changes how it influences your freedom. In essence, the definition and meaning that you give to your own life will change very much I free do you feel.
I don’t think that success itself is the reason of constrained freedom, I believe that “identity” is. I have always thought that defining one self translates to limiting what we could be. When we are five years old we could be anything! All we learn is new, exciting and you don’t really have a sense of identity developed enough. You could be really good at that and that is intrisically exciting! When we are young we have a curious and ambitious mind not yet defined (hence this sense of freedom: nothing in your life is yet defined). However, with age, external constraints and the natural path of life limits your options. For example, specialised careers or studies, creating a family or mastering any skill… All of that defines what you are in a very strong manner (to society and to yourself) and that can definitely limit your freedom.
I believe that as we age and we take important decisions in our lifes, our freedom is affected by the loss of possibilities. However, it all depends how you perceive yourself, how much do you want to organise and box your identity and what are you after in this life.
Do you think success is economical, professional, intellectual...? Is it a static goal or is it a journey? That changes how it influences your freedom. In essence, the definition and meaning that you give to your own life will change very much I free do you feel.
In my writing I err on the side of using simple words in the hopes that the charitable reader interprets it in whatever way it makes the most sense. Here I think I define “success” as “psychological success” = whatever makes you currently feel successful.
I don’t think that success itself is the reason of constrained freedom, I believe that “identity” is.
I definitely agree that strong attachment to identity is one of the big factors that constrain freedom, however I disagree with reducing this entire phenomenon to one mechanism. In my personal experience whenever I break what seems to me to be the biggest barrier, e.g. “identity”, to my freedom, I usually make progress for a period of time only to find another, entirely different barrier, in my way. To use a video game analogy, this is a final boss with multiple stages and “identity” is probably the first stage that most people get stuck on.
It seems like the shape of reality is itself bent in such a way to constrain our freedom, independent of whatever psychological attachments we have internally that only make matters worse.
I agree that success has multiple dimensions, and I think “identity” is a plausible explanation for what’s going on here.
But also, previously when I had asked “do children lose childlike curiosity?”, an answer that came back was “are we even confident that ‘childlike curiosity’ is a thing?”. This comment reminded me that I’d still like someone to look into that in more detail.
I enjoyed this post, although I don’t necessarily think sucess is essentially what is taking our freedom away. Firstly, what do you understand by sucess? I believe it might be highly subjective.
Do you think success is economical, professional, intellectual...? Is it a static goal or is it a journey? That changes how it influences your freedom. In essence, the definition and meaning that you give to your own life will change very much I free do you feel.
I don’t think that success itself is the reason of constrained freedom, I believe that “identity” is. I have always thought that defining one self translates to limiting what we could be. When we are five years old we could be anything! All we learn is new, exciting and you don’t really have a sense of identity developed enough. You could be really good at that and that is intrisically exciting! When we are young we have a curious and ambitious mind not yet defined (hence this sense of freedom: nothing in your life is yet defined). However, with age, external constraints and the natural path of life limits your options. For example, specialised careers or studies, creating a family or mastering any skill… All of that defines what you are in a very strong manner (to society and to yourself) and that can definitely limit your freedom.
I believe that as we age and we take important decisions in our lifes, our freedom is affected by the loss of possibilities. However, it all depends how you perceive yourself, how much do you want to organise and box your identity and what are you after in this life.
In my writing I err on the side of using simple words in the hopes that the charitable reader interprets it in whatever way it makes the most sense. Here I think I define “success” as “psychological success” = whatever makes you currently feel successful.
I definitely agree that strong attachment to identity is one of the big factors that constrain freedom, however I disagree with reducing this entire phenomenon to one mechanism. In my personal experience whenever I break what seems to me to be the biggest barrier, e.g. “identity”, to my freedom, I usually make progress for a period of time only to find another, entirely different barrier, in my way. To use a video game analogy, this is a final boss with multiple stages and “identity” is probably the first stage that most people get stuck on.
It seems like the shape of reality is itself bent in such a way to constrain our freedom, independent of whatever psychological attachments we have internally that only make matters worse.
I agree that success has multiple dimensions, and I think “identity” is a plausible explanation for what’s going on here.
But also, previously when I had asked “do children lose childlike curiosity?”, an answer that came back was “are we even confident that ‘childlike curiosity’ is a thing?”. This comment reminded me that I’d still like someone to look into that in more detail.
Strong upvote. Success doesn’t limit us. Success changes us. It is what we become that limits us.
Live free of attachment and you will always be free.