What is Freedom?
For the first time in forever, I woke up free today. As I write this, an abundance of natural light floods into my room through the blinds, my bed sheets covered in slotted outlines that alternate between sunshine and shade. For some this would be an afterthought, something trivial. But on any other Saturday I would be working in a poorly lit retail store, enviously observing weekenders frolic outside through windows that felt like a separation between two worlds.
Do you remember the last time you were allowed to simply exist? No work, no obligations, no external pressure to set up the grueling iPhone alarm that starts your day like shit? I feel privileged to be able to do so but then again, I worked some of the most miserable hours of my life to give myself a financial parachute.
[6 hours later] I took a break on this article to go see a girl. I’m free to do whatever, right? I’ve gone out with her plenty of times and I thought it could’ve gone somewhere, but every time we took a step forward there was an inevitable stumble backwards. While this was against all rational judgement, I try to see the best in people and I feel like I deserve the best in life too, so I accepted her invite out. Maybe I wasn’t as free as I once thought.
She groaned at me and complained that I took her all the way to Brooklyn until we were sat at the bar which she seemed to like, but at this point, I was already questioning my decision. I looked around the room and saw people that were visibly happy to be with each other, as opposed to me who was listening to dialogue that made me question the character of the person across from me. Was I ignoring this all along? Did I overlook this to appease my emotions? I was always able to look in her eyes and feel something that emitted dopamine, but not this time. I feel like I finally snapped back into reality. If you watch Severance, it was akin to my innie gaining sentience in the outside world.
Instead of holding myself hostage in a situation that would have chipped my pride and self-respect, I decided to break things off right then and there. Why should I waste her time, and why should I waste mine? Granted this is pretty oversimplified and you may think I’m an asshole, but I feel justified. As a matter of fact, I feel free.
[The morning after] So, after quitting my job, walking away from someone I didn’t want to be with, and releasing myself from the expectations of others, I’ve been asking myself: What does it mean to be free?
When someone asks you if you’re busy or if you have any time, you say: “I’m free”.
When you’re not tied to the will of others or the construct of expectation, you say: “I’m free”.
When you come to terms with who you are and stop letting fear control you, you say: “I’m free”.
Freedom is time. Freedom is willpower. Freedom is acceptance. Freedom is release.
Although my intrinsic belief is that love is the ultimate answer to our life and our existence, I question if love equates to freedom. Freedom is inherently selfish. It’s an individualistic plane of existence based on your actions and inactions. You can love yourself and be free, but is it possible to love others and truly be free? That would mean your time and emotions are entangled with another being, another spirit who has places to be, dreams to live out, decisions to make, another human with limited time-a commitment. I’d argue that the only way you can love and be free is to operate as one. To love and let go. To roll both participant’s wills into a greater union, for an energy far more powerful and liberating than earthly desire. You can’t be free in the construct of a shared life, but you can be free partaking in a truly shared existence. To experience because it’s your other half, rather than experiencing so you’re not alone. While this is a life altering leap of faith, the fear of commitment is just as much a pair of shackles, if not more bounding, than as to commit. It’s easy to delude yourself into thinking you are free when in reality you’re projecting your fearful state of indecision.
This all leads me to here: there is freedom that is of flesh, and there is freedom that is of the soul.
Freedom in the flesh can be unfulfilling; an unbridled exercise of free will can make you feel like a slave to your own choices and impulses. Though, in this human experience it is crucial to know when to trust your gut and march in your own direction rather than sitting complacent. It is my personal belief that we humans are meant to use our worldly freedoms in order to bring ourselves closer to our greater purpose: a purpose that transcends this seemingly impermeable construct of “society” and “civilization”. Freedom of the soul. As long as we’re all competing for jobs on LinkedIn instead of healing and growing as a species, we will never be free. The majority of earth works at meaningless companies that consume time (freedom) in order to give another man more time (freedom) while you earn a fraction of the resources that you feel will help set you free, to ultimately make him freer than you (or is he?). We’re programmed to believe that one man’s freedom comes at the cost of another’s. It is one of humanities greatest failures, but it also exists by oppressive design.
Because we keep accepting this social contract as it’s laid out for us, we will remain farther and farther from true freedom than you would like to think. For humanity to collectively experience true freedom, we would all have to let go and love each other. To be one instead of eight billion. Freedom of the soul is rid of ego, devoid of self; it is to not impinge on your cosmic energy as to satisfy your worldly desires. So where do you find that in the modern world? How do you achieve this balance? Well, I guess to be truly free in the world we live in is to cease to exist on this prison planet. To live for yourself and what you believe in, and to die for yourself and what you believe in. It’s all in your head anyway.
Will we all be free someday? I think so. I think one day a hot headed bureaucrat will inevitably commence a streak of devastating nuclear warfare that will eradicate everyone and everything. There will be no more flesh to serve as a vessel for your free will. All that will be left are our wandering souls, reincarnated into the next realm of consciousness which we’d happen to make it to anyway if nobody abused their individual freedoms. Like beating a video game because you corrupted the save file instead of playing the right way. When that happens, I guess I’ll see you all in the next life. You are now free to exit this article and do whatever you want (you always have been), thank you if you made it this far. Nothing Radio forever <3
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