You Can’t “Earn” Freedom

The quiet realization that freedom is something you give yourself, not something you achieve

You think you’ll eventually earn your way to deserving what you want.

That once you’ve proven yourself—through hard work, through kindness, through success—you’ll have earned the right to do what you really want to do.

Maybe it’s money. 
Maybe it’s appreciation. 
Maybe it’s status.

Or maybe it’s just reaching a certain age where you expect to finally feel, 
Now it’s okay for me to choose what I want.

But here’s the thing: 
You never really “get there.”

You can’t earn your way to freedom.
You can’t earn your way to believing you have the right to live how you want.
You have to give that to yourself.

You have to decide you are free.

This came up for me recently when my husband was telling me about a conversation he had at university.
(He’s back studying in his 50s, which is a story in itself.)

He was chatting with a young woman in her early 20s who said she’d put so much pressure on herself during high school to achieve, get good marks, live up to expectations.
The pressure, she said, came mostly from herself.
But her parents wanted her to become a doctor.
She became a nurse instead—almost a compromise.
But still… not what she truly wanted.

Now, she’s studying something she loves.

My husband said something encouraging to her—something like, Good for you. You should do what you want to do.

And without even thinking, as he was telling me this story, I found myself saying, “Yeah, you don’t want to wait until you’re nearly 60 to start believing you’ve earned that right to do what you want.”

It slipped out, straight from somewhere deep inside me.

Because I see it in myself.
I feel like I’ve waited until now—
after a long, “successful” career, 
after being kind and doing the “right” things, 
after making choices that often considered others first.

And even with all that…
I still catch myself thinking I haven’t quite earned the right to simply follow what I want.

The doubts don’t magically disappear.
But here’s what’s different now:
I’m moving ahead anyway.

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