Freedom

Today is the 4th of July, a day when American’s celebrate their independence and freedom. Given today’s issues with COVID and BLM I have been spending a lot of time thinking about freedom. What is freedom?

I really struggle with this idea of freedom because I realize that so many people feel oppressed. A government that is too large and is over reaching provides a sense of oppression. A system that apparently keeps a strangle hold on the underrepresented minority provides a sense of oppression. A desire to be right at the expense of being compassionate provides a sense of oppression. So how do we free ourselves from this oppression?

When asked, Google defines freedom as “the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint.” I read this and I think ultimately we all want this, but at the same time fear what “without hindrance or restraint” means. Are we really saying we want the freedom to be allowed to harm others? Are we really saying we want the freedom to do as we please without any restrictions on our behavior?

In an ideal world, freedom would be just that, the freedom to do exactly as we pleased without anyone giving us rules or “making” us do something different. In an ideal world we wouldn’t need restrictions. So why do we have them?

Perhaps we never mastered it, but at some point we stopped looking deeply and continued to live on the surface. We bounce from experience to experience seeing only the change and experiencing only the surface. This surface experience has us on an emotional rollercoaster experiencing joy in one moment and despair in another. We are overpowered by our emotion, not experiencing it but becoming it and defining our life experience by that emotion. We are, in fact, slaves to our emotional state. As long as we are living as slaves to our surface emotion we can never be free.

We mistake freedom for “happiness.” We feel free and unencumbered when we are happy so instead of searching for freedom we seek comfort and happiness. Only, these feelings are fleeting and don’t remain, thus we have to seek freedom in another and different way.

As long as we are seeking the next comfortable thing, it is impossible to trust ourselves to do the right thing, and thus impossible to trust someone else to do the right thing. We are defining freedom as what makes ME happy/comfortable in this moment. This means we will do selfish and hurtful things in the name of freedom.

On the other hand, when we gain personal mastery and are no long controlled by our emotions, but can experience them without being overpowered by them, we can experience true freedom. We are now the masters rather than the slaves. This allows us to have compassion, respect, understanding and trust for our fellow humans.

The first step toward finding this freedom? Gratitude. When we look for the things for which we are grateful our outlook changes. The world is much less dim.

The second step toward freedom? The realization that the only person over which you have any control is you. You can control your words, your actions, your thoughts. You have no control over what anyone else does, but you have complete control over what you do. You can choose to let things slide and live free from another’s expectations. You can choose to walk proudly in your truth. You can choose to succumb and rise to the bait someone offers you to be other than someone you are proud to be.

Freedom can only come when you realize that you can’t control the ever changing world, but you can control your response to it. You can always choose to act/speak/think in a way that lets you be proud of yourself.