Freedom
Are we actually Free? Let’s take a deeper look at how free we actually are.
According to Wikipedia,
Freedom, generally, is having the ability to act or change without constraint.
The ability to do what we want to do is freedom. If we want to do something, there should be no force or anything that should stop us from doing it, unless it harms others or it is illegal. No force, no people, not even our self-doubt or negative thoughts should stop us from doing it. That’s true freedom.
Most of us are governed by entities which give us a certain level of freedom. It is not only what ruling entities give us. It is much deeper. It is personal to everyone. Freedom is not given anymore. We either have it or have lost it. We have a choice to be free at any given point of time. If we are not free, that means we lose our freedom by our choices and decisions.
Freedom is happiness. Suffocation is horrible. We want to live the way we want to. We do lose freedom as we get attached to people and things. Scared of losing things we get attached to.
The most dangerous part of not being free to think is the wrong choices we make. The choices like the profession we get into, getting married, dating someone, many more. When we make a choice or a decision, such that its result makes us look good among people, or to please someone, it’s always the wrong choice. We face the consequences. Not the people whose opinion mattered to us while making that choice.
The freedom we loose with our loved ones
Most of us are being loved by one or more people. It could be parents, wife, husband, siblings, friends, girlfriend, boyfriend, someone. We choose to lose a certain level of freedom with these people.
It feels good to be loved. Sometimes too much of it as its effects. People who love us want us to be safe. It ties us up sometimes. Not able to take risks. It curbs our freedom to think. Our thinking also gets restricted without us even noticing it.
Going against their wish is not the solution. The first step is to recognise the act of them stopping us for our safety. Conveying them what we want to do, with necessary explanation is the way to go. It’s more of understanding them and their intention than expecting them to understand us. Understand them. It helps us to give them a convincing explanation and conveys our decision.
Sometimes we are happy to lose our freedom. We love people. We want them to be happy. We create a kinda zone where we don’t do certain things which disappoint them. It could be a boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, and relationships. We do sacrifice some for mutual happiness. Balance is the key.
The freedom we loose for others opinion
We do act according to people’s opinions. The intensity of how much people’s opinion matters to us varies from person to person. If we care about people’s opinion, we not only act but also do not think in a restricted way. We lose freedom.
Everyone cares about their own life. We all are busy thinking about us most of the time. Thinking about others is a very small fraction of the total thinking we do. So why do we bother what others think about us for a very small fraction of time?
When a person passes a negative comment on something I did, he/she spent only two mins thinking about it. That’s it. How sensible would it be for me to think about that comment and change my behaviour?
We are wired in a way to act according to people. We have grown into this. We are taught by providing positive and negative validation from our young age to do the right things. Telling if we are good or bad based on how we act. Positive validation made us happy. Eventually, we are grown to humans who look for positive validations from the people, people at least whom we admire or look up to.
People, whose opinion matters to us, change. When we are at school. Our classmates, friends and teachers ( sometimes :p ) matter. Later, as we enter college, we look back and smile at ourselves. The way acted or thought according to friends’ opinions. To prove something to someone who is no more part of our life. Different people at college. Even those change when you graduate. Different people at work. We are aware that it happens again as we move on. This at least should set us free from acting according to people’s opinion. It’s all momentary reactions to emotions, provocations and validations.
Good intention — Freedom = loss to humanity
We do have many good intentions. Intention to help others, save the environment, help the poor, influence people for a better society, vote for good government and many more. We should be 100% free to convert them into actions. It should never be the case where we have good intentions but won’t do it because we are free to do so. ie., we are either afraid of being judged, shy, family stooping us for our benefits etc., should not stop us. The lack of support or determination to act on the good intention is a different story. The reason should never be that we are not free to do it.
The impact of collective actions of good intentions from many people is massive. It could change a lot of things in the world. Many problems go away. If the same intentions are not converted to action due to lack of freedom alone, that’s a huge loss. Lack of self-awareness. self-awareness is the solution.
Towards being free!
No hacks, no shortcuts. Self-awareness is the only way toward actual freedom. We are all free to think, develop habits that increase our self-awareness, with our knowledge.
These habits could help.
Active thinking, as a daily habit: Spending a while every day doing nothing but thinking. It could be a couple of minutes up to an hour or more. Thinking of the action we are doing and the choices we are about to make. Watching the thoughts. Checking if our thoughts are the result of anyone’s opinion or to please someone.
Meditation: Its definitions are pure perspective. I am not going into the process. Calmness is of the many advantages of meditation. Being calm helps us to think and audit our thoughts better. Eventually, being more aware.
Being Truthful: Not being truthful leads to fear. Fear leads to low self-confidence. We tend to be affected by people’s opinions when we feel low confidence. The other way is also true. Being free helps to be truthful. Irrespective of what others think. Being truthful always is ideal. Let’s be truthful as much as possible.
Social media impressions: Social media is a powerful tool. Ability to convey a message to thousands of people in one click. Social profiling is not so good. Social profiling is a collective representation of people’s opinions on the way you presented yourself. Here the goal is to get good opinions/validation and more impressions. This thinking also influences us to act the same in the real world. Struggling for validations and opinions on everything we do, think, wear and talk. Negativity in the comment section is not required. It affects our self-confidence. Easy to lose freedom on online virtual media.
“It’s important to not lose our freedom. Let’s start being aware. Freedom fighters have created a free society. Now it’s time to start a freedom struggle within ourselves. For a better society.”
