I guess you can say you're free when you don't feel confined to a goal
to achieve and are not confined so much that you are not able to seek it.
Some quotes I like.
"Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it." -André Gide
You are digging for the answers until your fingers bleed, to satisfy the hunger, to satiate the need.... And as you pray in your darkness for wings to set you free, you are bound to your silent legacy. ~Melissa Etheridge, "Silent Legacy," Yes I Am, 1993
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” Rainer Maria Wilke
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I think this is, to me, a journey vs. destination: living freedom or gaining freedom.
To me, it's better to live freedom even if I loose it later by death, than to suffer confinement my whole life hoping to be free in an afterlife.