"Every man shall die. But not every man lives fully"
- Mel Gibson as "William Wallace" in "Braveheart"
What does it mean to be free? Why is freedom so hard to gain? Some people would say we are more free then we have ever been; with all the choices and opportunities there is in life these days. How could we not be free?
Of course we live in a (fairly) large planet and the circumstances are different from place to place but I'll focus on the type of society (typical Western society) I live in since this is my blog. There is a total freedom of what school to go to, it is very easy to study in a foreign country and you can become virtually anything you want in life. And this type of "freedom" applies to pretty much everything!
How can we not be free?
Actually I once saw a seminar held by some "social scientist" that all this "freedom" or "free choices" we have is actually imprisoning us. We have so many choices that it paralyzes us and I must agree. I think we all can. But I wouldn't say that the many choices is what paralyzes us or imprisons us; I'd say its our fear.
We only have one life and we don't know what-a-fuck to do with it! We don't know shit!
At least that is how we feel. That is how we have been raised to feel.
The problem, in my opinion, comes from what is expected from us. I don't buy into the concept of "not knowing" what you want out of life. Anytime somebody tells me they don't know I think to myself "No, you're just too afraid to admit what you want".
See, there's a pattern of failure and the fear and pain from it that almost everyone has inherited (or learned, as I would prefer) from our parents.
There are different stories but a major concept people in general get to hear by their parents are "Don't be like me - Succeed in life!"
And that is where I believe things go wrong. Because I believe that success is as most pleasure with as little pain as possible. I also believe that there is one and one way only to do that,
- By being free. Free from everything.
When all you do in life comes from being totally free, then you have the happiness your parents really want you to have. It doesn't mean that your life is easy, but rather meaningful.
But what is freedom? I believe the definition to be "When struggling to achieve your life goal"
It's not achieving it, nor is it chasing it. But that struggle to gain it. And I believe that the goal of your life have many forms and that the most important part is to distinguish your true goal with the temptations.
For instance,
When you struggle to stand up from the couch to go out and work out and during that work out you struggle to push your limit, you are struggling to achieve your life goal, thus being free. There are two things you want and one of them is to sit in your couch and the other to work out.
Your job is to figure out which is just a temptation and which is what you TRULY want. Of course it is different for each people and living fully is far far away from always killing yourself in struggle.
I believe that in life you must balance between Comfort and Adventure. Those two don't go hand in hand and if you go to Comfort too much you will then feel a lack of meaning in your life and boredom. If you go too much on the adventure you will loose grip of yourself and feel lost.
So the steps to freedom is simply finding out what you TRULY want to achieve and then do anything to achieve it, until that true wanting shifts.
Once you figure out what you truly want out of life on a bigger scale can you feel free to know that nothing you can ever do from that point is wrong.
So much pain comes from the fear of regret and pain. In trying to fulfill your life goal there can never be anything to regret nor feel pain from; because whatever happens is a lesson.
And really, so what? Live by avoiding pain and following your fear and you'll probably live for long. The question is how MUCH will you be living for so long?
Live by following your passion and you may or may not live long, but you will always be sure you lived your life fully.
Because really, and I'm not joking really, every man shall die. But not every man will live fully!