# The Paralysis of Freedom > [!deck] > Why abundance frees us from how to survive, only to ask what to live for. Poverty and abundance are usually imagined as opposite states, but each bends their owner's will to its own logic. A lack of capital can narrow our freedom of choice—labor to put food on the table. It forecloses high degrees of freedom. Conversely, abundance imposes the paradox of choice. When every path is open, necessity takes its leave, and paralysis sets in where ambition should. Choice always carries risk, and risk has two faces. Material risk is the risk of losing what one has, and at the bottom, of not surviving at all. Existential risk is the risk of staking one's life on the wrong thing. The two are usually entangled and together narrow the field of view; fewer paths exist which balance material necessities and existential vocation. > Whether as a farmer or artist or teacher or the like—leading a good life is not just hard, but risky. You stake your all on this throw. Each of us must choose. You cannot evade this choice. > > — After Hughes, Massenzio & Whitaker, *Complete Family Wealth* Poverty makes the choice for you. There are few options when you are fending for survival. Abundance untangles the risks and ignores the material one, leaving the existential question standing alone, unhelped by circumstance. The heir, freed from the question of how to survive, inherits the harder one: what to live for. No friend, parent, mentor, or book can answer that question for you; the chance of failure will always remain. It is memoryless. > [!source] Inspired by the reading of *Complete Family Wealth*.