A few years ago I spent a few months in Italy, came home, and then did another few months in Argentina and Uruguay. During both trips, where I would work and then explore, I had moments where I rented a car. I didn’t rent the car on either trip to get to a place, but to get out of the predetermined routes of trains and busses that had become the norm of the trips.
I was sick and tired of having to go where the route would take me, rather than spontaneously going wherever the hell I wanted to go.
In Italy I wanted to save, to not spend too much, to spend a good amount of time in each town, but it become too much. It’s a small country. It lacks space, and if you don’t have a car, you won’t find it.
In Argentina, it’s much more spread out, but again, if you don’t have a car you can’t really see all the place has to offer. When I rented the cars I went hiking, horseback riding, even just driving to the coast in Italy for a swim on a whim rather than having to plan an excursion.
Men have always fought and died for freedom and for power. We crave liberty. It’s like we’re born with a chip on our shoulder to stand up and against anyone who tells us what to do. Some of us never rid ourselves of that chip.
When we’re confined, maybe in a job we hate, a routine we’re not fond of, even poverty or debt or a lack of meaning and purpose, man, it’s crushing. We can feel the vice-like grip of having a lack of freedom squeezing, suffocating the masculine energy, power, and drive that once flourished.
Men. Need. Freedom. We need liberty. We need both in many ways, different forms, and we need to find it and create it or we’ll end our lives feeling as though we never actually lived. We’ll feel that we existed, and often in response to what others wanted us to do, or what others want for us, or in response to our surroundings that we never took control over.
A Man’s Guide to Finding Freedom
Safety: The Enemy of Freedom
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” ― Benjamin Franklin,
When we give up freedom for safety we lose. We all lose. Individually, if safety becomes the singular pursuit, we remove any chance of adventure, you know, that thing that feeds our soul and makes us feel alive. We also strip ourselves of being able to defend ourselves, giving that job to another.
Safety cannot consume us. Freedom, must.
How can you experience the thrill of a hunt, a hike, or even simply being in the great outdoors, if you’re consumed by trying to be perpetually safe?
The quest to be safe stands between a man and what he must deem as living, the verb, the act of being alive. We need danger if we’re to have freedom and liberty.
Don’t Fuck With Someone Else’s Freedom
“Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves”
―
If you don’t like hunting or guns, then don’t hunt or buy guns, but don’t you dare tell someone else that they have to live how you want to live. Your freedom and their freedom have to be respected.
We’ve become a society where we’re more concerned about telling others how to live than we are about living well, ourselves.
You see it in youth, young people under the age of 30 or 40 who still live at home, don’t pay taxes, don’t have jobs, don’t create jobs, telling other people that they shouldn’t own guns or that they should pay more in taxes. Jordan Peterson has a great line about this, something along the lines of, if you can’t keep or own damn room clean how do you expect to change the world for the better?
Don’t fuck with someone else’s freedom. If you don’t want to eat animals, I have no right to force that upon you. Just like you can’t force me to eat soy.
The Freedom to Be Offended
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” ― George Orwell
In life we learn more from opposition than we do from agreement. We grow more by seeing things differently than we do by surrounding ourselves by people who think exactly as we do.
We’ve become soft, there’s little argument around this. We’ve become so soft that many among us scream if they hear ideas that differ from their’s.
Grow up.
Finding Freedom Every Week
“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.” ― Theodore Roosevelt
Finding freedom, the freedom that feeds your soul, that makes you feel alive, takes effort. You have to drive or hop on a plane. You have to hike, climb, and walk for miles. It takes effort to get out there and live free.
Which is precisely why few people do it.
You have to learn new skills. You have to train your body to be able to endure what you’re setting out to do and where you’re setting out to go.
Regardless of the effort it takes, it’s always worth it.
If you want to feel alive, to feel like a man, get off your ass and get out there.
Set the goal of getting out into nature, where you’re not surrounded by humans and buildings, where you’re alone or with a pal or your pup, looking at beauty that will take your breath away while also giving you the feeling as though you’re truly breathing air that men have been breathing for thousands of years. You’re sharing air with grizzly’s and elk, cougars and moose. You’re among the wild, and so, you too are wild.
