Truth in observation
... and 3 other things I'm working on and thinking about this week
What it means to work for freedom
Tim Kennedy is a former UFC middleweight contender who served in the US Army as a Green Beret sniper. When asked what he would put on a billboard if given the chance, he said:
“Everything you want is on the far side of hard work.”
He went on to elaborate: “We’re in a culture of entitlement. Everyone wants the quick, easy, fast everything… But everything you want is on the far side of hard work. That goes for everything: success, work, sleep — everything. It goes for freedom. The only place freedom exists is on the far side of work… And I would just say to everyone: go work for freedom.”
Some people hear the word freedom in a quote like that and feel a sense of resonance, a reminder of what is true and important. Others hear it and feel dismissive, associating those words with systems and values they don’t support.
For me, the concept of working for freedom is one that I find powerful. Ultimately my work revolves around this idea of working to create freedom for as many people as possible. And the specific way I feel called to do that is by helping people with very few pathways to economic advancement create freedom for themselves through microbusiness.
I am passionate about that approach both because I’ve seen first-hand the liberatory impacts of microbusiness ownership on so many people. But also because it fits within a theoretical framework that I think is almost unassailable. When I was in college, I remember sitting in a laundromat as I read Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen’s book, Development As Freedom. I looked up from the book, out the door of the dark laundromat, and had one of those transcendent moments of clarity where it felt like the curtain had been pulled back on how things really worked.
Sen’s core concept (per this good summary) is that “Poverty is characterized by lack of at least one freedom, including a de facto lack of political rights and choice, vulnerability to coercive relations, and exclusion from economic choices and protections.” And a common quote pulled from the book, an encapsulating concept, is: “no famine has ever taken place in a functioning democracy."
This conceptualization of what development really is — on a personal, national, or worldwide level — helps me filter ideas and approaches: does this project/choice/format/money/relationship/etc create more freedom? It’s been almost endlessly clarifying when it comes to choosing what projects to pursue and how to structure them.
So yes, Tim Kennedy’s exhortation to work for freedom resonates with me. We all benefit from freedom at any level… and we all benefit from working for freedom — individually and collectively.
A quote I’ve been mulling over
“Truth in observation — that will win a fight.”
In my work, in my parenting, in my personal development: this has been resonating. (It’s a quote from the trainer of an Olympic boxer, via a story told in Sam Sheridan’s book.) It of course reminds you of Richard P. Feynman’s famous reminder: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.”
Things that are bad for economic growth
Fear.
People hiding at home, rather than starting businesses or going to school or taking their kids to afterschool programs.
Low birth rate, if left uncountered by other sources of population growth.
Small business owners struggling to hire affordable employees or have them show up for work.
How I felt this week trying to create concrete workplans from some bigger ideas I have
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