Who has got the initiative over our life-energy?

Here's a thought.

We're dependent on the paycheck for our livelihood for a considerable time.

We earn that paycheck by giving our life-energy away; our concentration, enthusiasm, wit, skill or labor. 

What guides where we focus our life-energy is the force that gives us the paycheck.

That directing force is ultimately dictated by the needs of society and the market.

What does freedom do?

It brings the control of that force, to decide where we spend our life-energy (concentration, enthusiasm, wit, skill and labor) over to us.

Art wants out

Suddenly, the initiative is in our hands. 

We become true grown-ups, adults, and sovereign in deciding where to spend our energy, without a guiding force to nudge us.

The beauty of early financial indepet is that much of that life-energy still remains in our hands; in our relative youth; it has not yet been spent in the hands of the market and society.

We still have energy to spend.

It's, though, an error to think that freedom means that the life-energy shouldn't be spent on creative, interesting endeavors.

The energy we're granted is far too interesting to squander away, in our opinion, on too simple pleasures.

Hedonism requires complexity.

And mastery of complexity is art, and art wants out.

And with freedom, the initiative to set that art free is ours. 

Farewell,

//antinous&lucilius