ARE YOU FREE?
The other day I found myself walking down the street, headphones on, on my usual morning walk, dancing down the street, not particularly caring whether the cars passing by, the bikers, the joggers, the runners, cared or even thought about what I might be doing or why.
As I became aware of myself being, well, myself, I started thinking about the feeling and the act of being free; about what would happen if more of us could access this feeling and this mode of operation more often. Even momentarily. Even for a second, a minute perhaps.
What would happen if we all lived every minute in that way?
What would happen in our individual lives if we went from noticing these seconds of freedom so we could extend them to minutes?
And what if the minutes, with our active participation, turned into hours? Days, weeks, months, until it becomes so normal and so part of how we move through the world that it no longer requries conscious thought? That the outlier seconds and minutes were no longer fleeting moments of personal freedom, but rather unbearably awkward moments of feeling constrained?
How would our lives change?
How would this ripple out to our communities?
How would, in turn, the world change?
It was the 4th of July as this thought cloud took shape, so the concept of freedom was floating through the air but this is something I’ve been thinking on for the last couple of years as I pursue and actively (re)build a life, a career, my own little universe that is centered around complete and total freedom. What I’ve found (and am still uncovering) is that true freedom, the kind that ripples into every aspect of my life, goes far beyond the obvious, surface definitions of “free”.
In the words of Meek Mill, there's levels to this s*it.
The concept - - - the idea of freedom in its whole, big, beautiful, expansive grandiosity - - - is, of course, more complicated than whether we can let ourselves dance in public without care.
There’s the systemic and the structural. The environmental and the cultural. In these lies an enormity and power of influence (and, often, restriction) that can’t be understated. Still, their role in the grander scheme of this conversation can’t be the end stop. Simply because they didn’t just appear and impose themselves on us - - - they were built, implemented, and accepted by people. People like you and I. By all of us.
And so, as with everything, I’ve followed this thread and I’ve dug down through the layers to end up back in the same place I so often do; to the same root, the same starting line : me. you. us. the individuals, that make up the collective that imagines, designs, votes on, establishes the standards and the shape of things. Every collective is, in the end, the accumulated expression of individual lives.
Here’s what the thought thread looks like, as simply as I can summarize it, so you too can follow it and see where it ultimately takes you :
What does “freedom” even mean today?
Is it simply the conditions that allow individuals to speak freely?
or to pursue prosperity regardless of circumstance and background?
Is it access to options?
Access to opportunity?
What does “freedom” mean, personally and individually?
Is it financial?
Is it being able to do what you want with your time?
Go where you want, when you want?
Do what you want, when you want?
Are these last three dependent on the first?
Lower we go - - -
If you could do what you want with your time, what would you do with it?
If given the chance to do so, would you choose to spend it on things that light you up from the inside?
Would you even know what those are?
Or would you, consciously or unconsciously, just end up doing what you think you should be doing?
If you had unlimited resources, what would you spend them on? What would you use them to build?
Do you even know what that might be?
Or would you end up spending them on what the world tells you you should?
Deeper still - - -
Let’s say . . .
You live in a culture where you can say whatever you want, but you can’t say what you mean to your friend or partner without bracing. Or at all.
Are you free?
You have the time and resources to go wherever you want, but you don’t go until a friend agrees to go with you.
Are you free?
You can work on what you want, but you can’t make what you want without caring how its received and letting that reshape it.
Are you free?
You can vote however you want, but you can’t make a choice that’s you think is right without caring what your parents or friends think?
Are you free?
Follow this line long enough and it will inevitably land you somewhere obvious, but often forgotten about :
True collective freedom depends on true individual freedom.
True personal freedom, lived and experienced, is deeper than external circumstances; it depends on much more than finances, political or religious choice, or freedom of time.
It depends on how we define freedom, but more importantly, whether that definition is one we've consciously arrived at or unconsciously inherited.
And then once we do, on whether we pursue it in all aspects of our lives, or not.
Only when individuals pursue it fully is true collective freedom possible, because a collective can never become more free than the individuals continually creating and sustaining it.
So now the question becomes - - - are you truly free? or do you just think that you are?
xT