When We Feel the Need for a Free Day

I was listening to a retired friend describe some frustration and sadness he was experiencing over several requests for his time and attention, which came from friends, family, and volunteering commitments. He admitted he has a hard time saying “no,” since he is retired and felt he should be more open to helping, yet he still felt frustrated. In contrast, he noted how much he was looking forward to the coming Saturday when he had no obligations and could enjoy some “freedom.” But when asked what he would actually do with that time, he hesitated. He struggled to identify a specific plan, offering instead the general response, “just free to do whatever I want.” He didn’t know what he would end up doing, only that he felt a pleasant anticipation of being able to follow whatever interested him in the moment.

Setting aside the discussion of his freedom to say “no” and his sense of obligation to say “yes,” it occurred to me that the “freedom” he described might actually be a strategy to meet a more fundamental need. I reflected on what makes me feel frustrated when my own mind sends warning signals of being overwhelmed by too many requests. Inside myself, I saw a tension between the urge to satisfy others’ requests and the urge to pursue my own internally motivated interests.

Doing things for others is not solely about them; our motivation for helping is often driven by a mixture of removing an unpleasant sense of obligation and gaining a pleasant sense of competence or appreciation. It is not completely about the other person’s needs at the cost of our own; rather, there can be a competition between our own internal needs. On one hand, we have social needs involving give-and-take interactions. On the other, we have individual needs for self-care and self-actualization. In other words, part of life involves being engaged with others, while another part involves undistracted time being engaged with ourselves.

Based on psychological principles, we can predict that when a person experiences an imbalance between these two states over time, they will experience inner distress or cognitive dissonance. However, the optimal balance is highly individual, shaped by one’s temperament, personality, history, and social context. One person’s miserable imbalance of obligation and freedom might be another’s delightful harmony.

Sometimes we know exactly what we want to do with a free day, and sometimes we only know that we will appreciate the space to follow whatever emerges. If I were to take a guess and translate my friend’s story into more precise terms, I would say he desired “freedom from obligations” (a general strategy) in order to experience autonomy and creativity (the specific needs).

This understanding invites a further discussion: how can we ensure we use that time in a satisfying way when so many distractions compete for our attention? But I’ll save that for another “free day” of thinking and writing!