Caleb Jones | Personal Freedom

Personal Freedom

Reading Time – 5 minutes

Way back in the mid-1990s I was a young dumbass beta male in his mid-twenties still trying to figure out my life.

I had a high-paying job at a very well-respected company (Nike) at their magnificent corporate headquarters. I lived in my own condominium which I owned in a nice neighborhood.

I drove a cool sports car and had a bunch of cool nerd shit in my home (big cool TV, big cool fish tank, seven different computers of different types and eras, etc).

I was single, rarely had sex, was not dating anyone, and had no idea what I wanted in that part of my life. I had specific goals to make a lot of money but that’s pretty much all I had.

Even though I worked for a fun company and liked my co-workers, I hated my job and hated working the 9-5 wage slave life. I had a little business on the side I was trying to grow.

So I had some successes as a young man, but I still didn’t know what the hell I was doing.

One day at my job they pulled all of us into a big conference room for a big personality training for the entire day. Nike does that kind of stuff.

I enjoyed it. They gave us many different scientific exercises that taught us about our personal strengths, weaknesses, desires, fears, and so on. I learned a lot.

Then we had one exercise in particular which was one of the many turning points in my life back in my twenties.

They handed us a big deck of cards, about 30 of them. On each card was written an important life thing, like “LOVE” and “MONEY” and “CHILDREN” and “SELF-ACTUALIZATION” and “PASSION” and “HEALTH” and “SPIRITUALITY” and “MEANING” and “FITNESS” and “ART” and “GOD” and “MUSIC” all kinds of other things, from every area of life you could possibly think of.

They told us we needed to lay all the cards out on the table, then sort the cards from top to bottom in an importance ranking, from the most important thing in your life to the 30th most important.

One of the rules was that no two cards could be side-by-side and equal. Every card must be ranked above or below and no ties were allowed.

It was hard. The bottom and middle ones were easy so I sorted them fast. But the top ten items, and certainly the top five, were really hard to rank.

I mean, how the hell do you rank things like “love” and “money?” Aren’t both of those things super important? You can’t not have money but you also can’t not have love either… right?

“Self-Actualization” was up there too. Wasn’t that the most important thing in my life? Being the best man I could possibly be? Could anything be more important than that?

Like I said, difficult.

But finally, in the end, I did it. It burned my brain to do it, but I finally I ranked every card from top to bottom, all 30, with no ties.

When I was done, I looked at the big list.

Then I looked at the top card, the single most important thing in my entire life. It said:

FREEDOM

“Freedom?” I asked myself, “Really? That’s the most important thing in my life?”

“Yes,” my mind answered.

“Freedom is more important than money?” I asked, “How can that be? I LOVE money!!! And money makes you free!”

“Yes, you do love money and that’s why it’s in the top five,” my mind replied, “But freedom is still more important. What if you were a billionaire but felt stuck working every day in business you didn’t like while being married to some shrew who ran your life? Would that make you happy?”

“Hell no,” I said, “But what about love?”

“What if you had all the love you wanted in your life but had to work at McDonald’s 50 hours a week to pay your bills? Or you had all the love you wanted and were a multi-millionaire but still had to work 50 hours a week at your business?”

“Okay, yeah, I get your point. But wait a minute. Self-Actualization. Surely THAT is more important than freedom? How could freedom be more important than that??? There’s no way, dude.”

“Why do you want to self-actualize?” my mind asked, “Constantly improving, being the best man you can be in all areas. What’s the point of it all in the end? Happiness? Bragging rights? Inner peace?”

“No,” I answered, “I mean, I want all of those things, but none of those is the endgame point of self-actualizing. Not for me.”

“Then what is?” my mind asked.

“Freedom,” I said quietly. “I want to do whatever I want. I don’t want anyone or anything or any conditions to limit my choices, no matter what. I want to be free. Period.”

“Exactly,” my mind said, “That is the biggest thing you want, Caleb. More than anything else in the world, more than anything else in life, you want to be free. Other people have other priorities, but not you. You want freedom.”

This was 30 years ago and I still remember that moment, sitting at that table in that big room, staring down at those cards, both of my palms on the table, staring at that top FREEDOM card, knowing for the first time in my life, with 100% certainty that freedom was the number one most important thing I wanted. More than love, happiness, health, self-actualization, and any of those other 30 items.

Eventually, I would discover that things like love, health, and money in certain amounts are required for freedom, but freedom was still the endgame goal.

Money is not the endgame goal. Money is only required for freedom.

Health is not the endgame goal. Health is only required for freedom, meaning freedom from physical problems, physical pain, physical stiffness, and going to the doctor all the damn time.

Even love, for me at least, is not the endgame goal. Freedom is more important. Once I have freedom, then I can have love, but only as long as the love doesn’t disrupt my freedom.

Given the choice between love and freedom, I will always, always choose freedom. Every. Single. Time. Without hesitation.

And I have made that choice several times throughout my life. And I’ve never regretted it.

Inner peace. Family. Spirituality. Fitness. Sex. Business. Children. Friendship. These are all critical things and I’ve embraced all of them to some degree or another throughout my life and even today… but none of them, and I mean none of them, are more important to me than freedom.

I would confidently discard all of them if it meant reducing my freedom, without hesitation, without question.

Am I weird?

Yes. Very much so.

The vast majority of humanity doesn’t agree with anything I just said. There’s a reason why libertarians get less than 1% of the vote in the Western world every time there’s an election, even when everyone agrees the two non-libertarian candidates are absolutely dreadful people, like when it was Hillary vs. Trump.

Most people think that freedom is nice but my kids, country, God, fitness, spouse, business, dog, politics, passion, or whatever is more important, and being a good person is much more important than being a free person.

As a matter of fact, prioritizing personal freedom over those things is kinda shitty, selfish, or immature, they say.

Which is fine. They’re welcome to say that. I figured out by the time I was six years old that I was built fundamentally different than most other people, so I’m used to being unusual.

I’m just happy that I discovered this freedom thing about myself in my mid-twenties instead of later in life like a lot of people do.

I’m also happy that I actually took action to design a life like this starting back then instead of waiting until my thirties, forties, or fifties to do it after some kind of catastrophe, which is what a lot of other people do.

If you’re not like me, that’s fine. Carry on in your unfree life.

But if you’re like me, it’s time to start moving hard in that direction.

Because every other path for you leads to Hell.

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8 Comments
  • Andy
    Posted at 04:51 pm, 23rd May 2025

    What was the purpose of that exercise in the company?

  • Optinimus
    Posted at 06:26 pm, 23rd May 2025

    That sounds like a really useful exercise to do. Great post.

  • David
    Posted at 06:58 pm, 23rd May 2025

    It’s true that genuine libertariansm will never become mainstream or win elections in “democratic” countries. For this reason .getting involved with politics is largely a waste of time. The closest you come to it is some non democratic systems eg. Hong Kong. Most libertarians would better focus on improving their own life.

  • Caleb Jones
    Posted at 01:06 pm, 24th May 2025

    What was the purpose of that exercise in the company?

    To know your strengths and weaknesses and thus become a better employee for Nike.

    (That particular objective didn’t work on me though.)

  • Caleb Jones
    Posted at 01:07 pm, 24th May 2025

    Most libertarians would better focus on improving their own life.

    Exactly right, as I’ve been screaming from the rooftops for about 20 years.

  • AlphaOmega
    Posted at 01:41 pm, 25th May 2025

    “To know your strengths and weaknesses and thus become a better employee for Nike.

    (That particular objective didn’t work on me though.)”

    My experience at corporate is that it serves no purpose and just wastes their money. This is illustrated easily by looking at cases where they completely ignore results they do not like. Its of course totally fine to not follow the recommendation from the training of how deal with the employee but then if they opt to do that then these exercises become a pointless waste of time and money.

  • Caleb Jones
    Posted at 12:39 pm, 26th May 2025

    My experience at corporate is that it serves no purpose and just wastes their money.

    This is usually the case, yes.

    Big corporations are almost as bad as the government when it comes to wasting money.

  • AlphaOmega
    Posted at 06:15 pm, 26th May 2025

    “Big corporations are almost as bad as the government when it comes to wasting money.”

    That and I saw there are a lot of idiots hiding there doing useless stuff or even stuff that is counter productive, but they fit within the corporate paradigm so they even get promoted or at least keep their jobs for years and decades.
    I would say its not an exaggeration to say that you meet as many retarded people in a corporate as in a mental institution. Of course the degree to which they have a “problem” or the type of it might be different but still.
    Those people are the ones who complain the most loudly when someone is doing non standard approach to work, never the good productive ones.

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