Freedom. It’s a word that gets thrown around a lot today. I don’t know if this is just me, but I get these adverts on Instagram all the time trying to sell me into the business of creating my own ‘freedom’. It’s really got me thinking, what do people even mean when they say they want to be free? Does it mean being able to do what you want when you want? And how much does money come into this? Because realistically, there are limitations to things, and there is a cost for this so called ‘freedom’.
I suppose, freedom means different things to different people. For me, it generally means being able to do what I want, without causing harm to others or the world around me. Moving to Vietnam was an act of freedom, because I didn’t have to ask permission, and other than the significant carbon emissions from my flight (which I don’t under-egg here) I can’t really think of any way this trip is detrimental. But there is a cost to it. There’s the cost of missing home, the risk of financial uncertainty and the decline of my professional reputation in fields once familiar, now abandoned with no turning back. Because I choose not to.
But whatever path we choose, it takes commitment. And at some point, that’s going to mean that we have to say ‘no’ to something else when we want to say ‘yes’. So, we can’t always do exactly what we want. But the real paradox is this. Freedom from wanting is the key to true freedom. A lot of the time, so much of the motivation for what we do is to attain a point where we want for nothing because we have everything we could want. The pitfalls here are forgetting that we largely have everything we need already and therefore what we miss out along the way. Precious time spent with friends and loved ones, the opportunity to stay present and for intrusive thoughts to subside by the way. Instead, striving for the next goal becomes an addiction with every dopamine hit as we surpass each milestone. And yet, when do we actually stop to look back and appreciate everything we already have? At what point does it become enough?
God knows we all need goals because nothing would happen without them. But I do wonder if we misunderstand what freedom really is and make it a trap for ourselves. Most of us in western society are free beyond measure. From birth, we have free access to healthcare, education, liberal democracy, freedom from slavery, oppression and control, freedom to work in the job we choose, freedom to say YES and freedom to say NO. So, when there are still people in the world today who are enslaved, trafficked, displaced, destitute, and politically imprisoned, it seems kind of preposterous to assert that we are anything but free already.
When we chase what we call ‘freedom’, we chase desire. It’s a loop we’ve been trained to circuit again and again in a capitalist society which feeds on the wanting of hungry hearts and minds. We replace peace with a deceptively misleading disguise of freedom that actually only takes us further away from ourselves.
If we really want to be free, the work we have to do is to untangle our minds of the expectations, conditions and beliefs it’s been wrapped in since before we could speak, and remind ourselves that everything we could possibly need is already here, right now. All we have to do, is embrace it.
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