Life goes on. We get up, we brush our teeth, we go to work, we get home, we watch TV, we sleep. Sometimes we jump for joy, sometimes we weep. Life goes on.
Each of us has a built a life from habits. These habits both make our lives possible, but also bind us to our routines. If we let them, these habits can result in years flowing past.
This is necessarily not a bad thing. Many people have had extremely fulfilling lives with minimal introspection. However, those people have often consciously or unconsciously lived in line with their deepest wants and desires.
What’s more, these people are rare. For the rest of us, we need to ask ourselves a question without a clear answer. Figuring it out may take years, but each time we ask it, our finger tips brush closer:
What do you want from life?
Seems like a simple question, right?
Its not! Note only we will all of us have many answers, each of these answers will be as unique as the asker. Even the same words: “I want to be truly loved” could mean vastly different things for different people. For one person, it might mean they want to have a love affair that consumes them. A unforgettable period of burning passion, so intense that it could never last. For another, they may want a partner they grow to know so well that, by the end, they cannot imagine their life without them.
For many of these answers, the only place you can seek them is inside yourself. However, I do believe there is one thing we’re all looking for. At the core of our being we call out for it, looking for it consciously and unconsciously as we move through our lives: meaning.
The Japanese have a word for this: “Ikigai“, which is roughly translated to be “A reason for being”.
So why do so few of us find it?
The key lies in the third question: “What you can be paid for“. The world needs fewer actors than people who want to be actors. Fewer musicians. Fewer artists. This means people who try to live their own Ikigai in one of these areas can end up disappointed through no fault of their own.
So what does this have to do with FIRE?
FIRE frees us from this constraint. FIRE, at its core, its the attempt to free yourself from the need to sell your time for money, so that you can instead do what is meaningful.
The cost is delaying pleasure. The cost is saving rather than spending. But all things worth having cost, and freedom is really worth having.
Don’t delay asking yourself these questions.
Seek to understand why you’re chasing financial freedom. Is it to escape a job or life you hate? Can you keep moving towards your goal while living a life closer to the one you want?
Ask yourself what you’ll do when you finally FIRE. Financial independence forums are full of people who can do anything but have no idea what they want. Don’t be them, dream big.
Seize the day. Ask yourself, what do I want from life? now.
Find your freedom. Find your meaning. Find your Ikigai.
