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The Life You Want Is on the Other Side of the Consequences You’ll Accept
You can do anything you like; you only need to face the consequences.
You can leave the exhausting job, relocate to a charming country cottage, and start raising chickens. However, be prepared to clean the coop weekly, justify your choices at dinner parties, and acknowledge that you Google “diarrhea in chicken.”
You can do that, and if you choose not to, it’s because you don’t want to face the consequences.
We talk about choice as if it’s constrained by external pressure, but the fundamental constraint is internal — the unwillingness to pay the price. You can do anything you want if you are willing to pay the price.
Every choice has a cost. We are finite humans with limited time. Whenever we choose one thing, we say no to something else. You can impress your boss or child on Friday night — but only one will remember it in 20 years.
Freedom lies in the willingness to pay that price. Real freedom does not mean the absence of limits but the power to choose your trade-off within limits. This is the difference between responding to life and creating a life, between living passively and purposefully.
