What is Freedom?

Recently on the BBC News, I heard a sequence of people all answering the question of "What does freedom mean to you?"

All of the answers presented were framed as "Freedom is being free to do whatever you want, whenever you want."

Of course, this definition, when taken to its logical conclusions, would mean that the slave owner is exercising his freedom by enslaving others. It would also mean that the criminal is free when he/she steals or kills or lies and breaks laws.

Freedom has to have limits. This seems to be a contradiction to the very term unless we think of those limits using another term. That term is purpose.

Freedom is really the idea of being free to live our lives according to our life's purpose. This idea will evade some people, as they attempt to suppress the thought, knowing that if it is faced, they are also forced to stand face to face with a purpose giver.