The Other Self-Evident Truth

America’s founding fathers were well-attuned to the tendencies of human nature.

One of the “self-evident” truths they articulated in the Declaration of Independence was that

All experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

What keeps us from freedom is not a lack of money or time or other resources; it’s that we tolerate our own pain.

We become comfortable in our discomfort.

We become locked in the prison of our own suffering.

Freedom isn’t free; it comes at a price: your security, safety, and sense of belonging.

To attain freedom you must be willing to give up what you’ve known, step into uncertainty, unfamiliarity, and the possibility of failure.

You must be willing to release the mindset of “this is how we’ve always done it.”

You must be willing to abandon the expectations to which you have always conformed, and destroy the structures that have previously held you — even those that you’ve invested in building.

None of this is easy. To break free requires that we tear apart our very foundation, that we raze the structure on which we’ve built our identity, and that we walk a path that may be untested.