What Does It Mean To Be Free?

I could catch a flight right now to Austria and spend months on end exploring Europe. I could fly to Nepal, become a monk and try to help the world with its spiritual suffering. I could stay in Canada, move to Silicon Valley or continue my exploration of South America. Why? Because I’m free.

What does it mean: to be free—to be able to act without restriction? It means firstly that I’ve already accomplished a lot of hard work, made sacrifices and kept the long term in mind. It also means that I have the confidence to believe in myself with whatever direction I take. I am not bound by the restriction of societal and social norms, the unsavory influence of those who would detract from my visions or the well-meaning but poorly thought out advice of others.

I am free from doubt, guilt, monetary restrictions or lack of confidence. I am free from the idea, either real or imagined, of a cast of ‘others’ who keep a close eye on my actions and gossip with animosity directed towards someone determined to follow their dreams. But first, let me explain.

In my first year of schooling at the University of British Columbia, in fact within my first month or two, I felt a disconnect. The love for knowledge and understanding I was convinced I would find was in fact a love for the accumulation of material wealth, a love for following orders and being stuck in the pyramidal structure of corporate society—albeit higher up on the strata than those ‘Proles’ who only graduated highschool and would now be working under the managerial graduates of my university. The freedom of thought, critical thinking and belief in following your highest purpose was still absent, only a less maligned path towards the mortgage, two story house and double garage was present.

It would seem my other workaholic compatriots attending the University of British Columbia were willing to butt academic heads with me, do whatever they could to advance, work laborious hours as a professor’s bitch (sorry Mom) and drive themself into a fit—why? Well, obviously, to get a nice well paying job working for Acme corporation.

I remember making a Facebook status during that time which was well received, something along the lines of ‘University is to become good, dropping out is to become great’. It would seem two years earlier than I would actually make that move I was already preoccupied with ridding myself of the gasping, desperate climb up the corporate, and theoretically social ladder.

Well I hope you are enjoying this fiery diatribe on my early University experience, but unfortunately this is becoming a bit too autobiographical and drawn out to continue. Now that I think of this, doing a proper explanation to lead to the punchline would take thousands of additional words, and I am already knee-deep in some far more valuable work. Besides, I prefer the spoken word to the written word (even as a successful self-published author), and I would rather have my tone, volume and intonation tell the story for me as I speak it off the cuff, rather than crack away with my fingers (at 120 + WPM, but still).

The tl;dr version of the story that I will finish for interests of the viewing pleasure of my good friend Michael Thomas, is that after speaking with this intrepid individual, I realized he was the only other person at UBC who really inspired me. Ironically, he was also the only other person I knew who was seriously considering dropping out and pursuing their dreams outside of the structure of the laid-out-for-us path of ‘good highschool grades + good university grades + good volunteer work → good paying job + bigger SUV than your rival’ (lol, cynical, I know, but that is really the mind-frame of these institutions).

It’s obvious the education system is a rotting edifice. It needs to be thrown out, or at a minimum seriously reconsidered. Education is free now, coding is the most important skill of the upcoming century and it’s moving waaay too fast for these institituions anyways. Sitting in a classroom with beautifully attractive females your same age is not an optimized learning environment. Keeping yourself occupied with busywork for letters on a piece of paper is not the same as real education or knowledge. I could go on, but as you can see with my verbose style even my attempt at abruptly ending this piece has now drawn on a few more paragraphs.

Okay, real tl;dr, for anyone who may be reading this (I haven’t developed an audience on Medium, nor do I effectively use Twitter, so the audience in attendance may be sparse), the real tl;dr is this: leaving university early was one of the best decisions of my life. My job security now is 1000x better, my happiness and usable skills have skyrocketed (I have finished the publication of my book, travelled to another continent, and started a company that has received venture capital within this last year). In fact, this last year has felt like AT LEAST three years in terms of memories and things accomplished, and it was this absurd “there’s no way it’s only been a year…” moment which actually drove me to write this piece. Which must be finished abruptly because I have to get back to work. The end. ☺