Have we become so caught up in a world of material desires that we’ve lost sight of what truly brings us joy and freedom?

The fear that prevents us from leaving jobs we hate, keeps us holding onto unhealthy relationships, or stops us from taking that leap of faith, is often a fear of financial or material loss.

So many of us have become so caught up in a world of material desires that we have lost our spiritual and emotional path along the way.

Sometimes in life, you have a chance encounter with an extraordinary person that has you reassessing your life. Hearing other people’s stories can be a wonderful opportunity to reflect on your own journey.

I had such an opportunity recently when I had a conversation with a fascinating woman. She was in her late 30s yet had already travelled to over 45 countries, and had experienced some extraordinary things.

Having trained and worked as an aviation weapons expert, she had chosen to apply her skills to work with NGOs to rebuild war-torn countries. Her NGO work had taken her to various places around the world. She has no home base and in between contracts she travels around the world to visit friends she has made along the way.

She told me about the special women’s park in Kabul, Afghanistan, which is an oasis where women can free themselves of their burkas and enjoy tea and each other’s company in beautiful gardens. This was in start contrast to living in a compound in Kandahar, in the south of Afghanistan, where she had to be accompanied by four armed personnel just to go buy a loaf of bread.

She shared her experience of the ice hotel in Sweden and seeing the auroras, and talked about her trip up Machu Picchu. When I met her, she was in South Africa studying to obtain a technical qualification in Portuguese, a language she had learnt while working in Angola and Mozambique.

This is a woman who is living life, and I envied her freedom. But I also wondered if I could live such an unfettered life. I need a home base to help me feel secure.

How many of our decisions are based on what we think society expects of us? What would it mean giving up some of the materialism for the things that our souls crave?

I also wondered about the financial aspect of her lifestyle. What happens when she tires of this life and wants to create a home base? What will she do in her older years?

So I asked her. Despite the risks she had taken with her personal safely, she had been remarkably conservative with her finances.

She told me that from her very first paycheque she had started to save, and had always refused to buy anything on credit.

When she bought a house, the bank wanted to offer her a far higher mortgage, but she told them she knew what she was comfortable spending each month and refused their offer.

She had always made sure she had a nest egg, and that gave her the comfort and security of letting go. She can live the gypsy life and live out her adventures because she made good decisions early on.

I realised then that if you know you have a safety net in place, it’s a lot easier to let go and relinquish some sort of control over your daily life.

In another, diametrically opposite conversation, a colleague told me about what he called his midlife crisis. This involved going into serious debt to buy a Porsche at the age of 40 ‒ a decision he has regretted for years afterwards.

I asked him if a Porsche had been something that he had always wanted. Was this a dream come true for him? His answer: “No, not really. It just seemed the sort of thing you do at 40.”

How many of our decisions are based on what we think society expects of us? How much time do we spend understanding what it is that we actually want? What would it mean giving up some of the materialism for the things that our souls crave?

Maybe we need to start looking at our money and budgets differently: not as some forced limit on us that stops us “having it all”, but rather as an opportunity to understand what we really need to bring us joy and freedom.

In the words of David Krueger, author of Your New Money Story, “we need money in order to know what can’t be purchased.”

The choices we make today will be the future we live. Will it be one tethered to fear or one where we are free to explore?

This article first appeared in City Press.