Tomorrow is flag day, which triggered thoughts of nationalism. I’m not a person easily bound to others by geolocation or indoctrination, but by principles and integrity. Yielding autonomy to a commanding officer is a concept that sits uneasily with me, although I imagine many young folks with similar feelings signed up for one of the armed forces based on national needs and personal interests.

While out driving with Michelle looking for a walking location we stopped at the Calverton National Cemetery. What better place to contemplate nationalistic ideals than in a final resting place created to honor and remember those who served in the enforcement of our nation’s political principles. Some paid the ultimate sacrifice, dying in battle. Many others paid by suffering ever lasting physical and emotional scars. Their gravestones and crematorium markers gave me pause to consider the forces that drove them to sacrifice so much.

Fiscal costs and human costs are inseparably linked in violent military conflicts. The high costs of training, outfitting and resupplying soldiers, pilots and support personnel directly affect their safety and risk of casualty. I fear too often decisions are made by leaders who don’t respect each individual life as much as they should. Unfathomably hard decisions are demanded of leaders to minimize casualties and end conflicts as soon as possible. Morale and blood, both from soldiers and civilians are the gritty currencies spent to achieve victory.

My thoughts are consumed by critical value while working to build a startup, but few things are comparable to human life. They are orthogonal measures in my mind. Loved ones and freedom are the only things I can equate to sacrificing one’s life for. Neither of these has any financial equal. The question of what we’re willing to die for is closely related to the question of what we live for.

Rich in Choices: Freedom, Flexibility, & Commitment

Freedom is an easy idea to comprehend at first glance, but a challenging concept to fully grasp. It is the absence of restrictions. It’s a pole diametrically opposed to predictable events. There’s a strong correlation between freedom and chaos, but they are not equivalents. Living with absolute freedom is physically impossible and anything close to it is highly detrimental to life. Biological building blocks are complex but systematic, requiring a certain level of order for life to exist.

While the processes of life are better served closer to the poles of determinism and order, our personal sense of freedom is driven by a mix of individual and social forces*. As soon as we limit our freedom to a set of fixed options, it drastically approaches a predictable outcome. Most of our lives are spent optimizing choices in this limited opportunity space, and it’s where we focus the majority of our attention and energy.

Freedom is the measure of flexibility a person has in their daily choices

If you have to go the same place to do the same thing five or seven days a week you may not feel very liberated. We are challenged to find free thought in the same restricted activities. Fortunately we are capable of introducing unpredictable creativity even in habitual tasks. Beyond that we can work to nourish a life that is full of opportunities:

• building a large pool of capital through high value work/business
• having a healthy network of friends and family, an introduction at the right moment can be priceless
• A highly flexible & dynamic job. Find a new aspect to love about your work, while creating an ideal balance between work & personal life

An Analogy in Physics

Quantum mechanical particles represent a relationship between unknown (free) and measured (determined) states. The state of a quantum mechanical particle is represented by a probability distribution. There is a chance it is in one of several possible states which are only compressed down to a single state through measurement. The particles transition from a state of greater to lesser freedom.

Some Commitments are more Primal than Choices

It’s a little different for me now writing about the concepts of flexibility and rigidity, but not just as a newlywed. It was a few years before the ceremony where we both communicated our feelings and desire to share our lives together. Some decisions, like my life long commitment and marriage to Michelle, are as simple and fundamental as breathing. The loss of “flexibility” isn’t even a consideration. There was nothing resembling a decision, there was only an irresistable feeling of this is the way.

Notes:
*= it’s a little off topic for an already long post to dive into cultural effects on individual freedom, but worth me reading up on