Forget success.

Forget status.

Do not aim to ascend the corporate ladder with greater speed than those before you.

Do not try to attain “enoughness.”

Stop your endless quest to build yourself up into a person other people take note of, so great is your success and your status and your corporate ladder ascension.

There are myriad external measures one can apply to oneself, each of which is more spiritually inconsequential than the next.

But freedom, freedom is precious.

Freedom is the thing to strive for, to claim as your birthright.

It’s difficult to truly appreciate something you’ve never lacked. And so, those of us who are fortunate enough to have been born free tend to willingly forfeit our personal freedoms. We fret about offending the feelings of people who haven’t earned our regard. We put ourselves into categories, which dictate that only a small set of options are viable for us. We make it our mission to live without causing a stir; the fear of being different robs intelligent people of freedom every day. We fear judgement while casting judgment, weaving ourselves into a web of restriction.

I can’t say for sure, but my guess is that those who are fighting for their societal freedoms at this very moment, Blacks in America, for instance, fighting for the ability to walk outside with binoculars around their necks and not the knees of police officers, would spit at the thought of freedom squandered.

Freedom squandered is privilege wasted.

Claim your freedom. Claim your freedom from the tyranny of bullshit. Claim your freedom by uncovering the way of living that feels right for you. Claim your freedom by refusing to let the world dictate how that way of living stacks up.

Claim your freedom because you are worthy of feeling free. Not because of what you’ve done or haven’t done to deserve it. But because you are here.

Claim your freedom because how free you feel impacts how free you wish others to be. Those who are free and feel free expand freedom in the universe. They know that freedom is infinite. My freedoms do not take away from yours, nor yours from mine.

The most restricted will always seek to restrict. The most free will always seek to uplift.

Claim your freedom, then get behind every other person’s noble quest to claim their freedom, too.