Freedom is Not What You Think

Freederm is a brand of spot cream, and freedom is a brand of humanity I’m not too sure we’ve fully evolved into yet.

Not in the sense that we’re after, anyway.

Sure, we can stay out as late as we want. We can eat as many Oreos as our waistbands will allow. We can kiss thousands and marry whoever (still can’t marry thousands, though), no matter their heritage nor quantity of goats within their possession. Freedom, in many senses, is freely at our disposal.

But then, I think, in the ways that matter most, in the ways that truly govern our existence — time, space, emotions — we’re not that free at all.

What does “freedom” even mean?

“The power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants.”

Is one definition.

“The state of not being imprisoned or enslaved.”

Is another.

But are we really actioning those? Are they even that true? Do we really retain the right to act as we please, walk out of work when we’re tired or tell our elders “you’re wrong about that” though it might be deemed disrespectful?

Aren’t we imprisoned? By the 9 to 5? By the taxman? By our own imposed expectations — albeit unreasonable and often not even our own? Aren’t we enslaved by time? By the space we live in? By the times of that space that we live in?

We work to survive. We get weekends off, because we’re told we can. We buy into the appeal of buying things we don’t need, because that celebrity in that perfume advert said it’d be a good idea. We lose entire days to the sadness we’ve bottled up inside of us. We’re trapped inside depressed walls and trembling floors. We’re afraid to say that we love something too loudly. We rarely say what we actually think.

No, no, no, no, no.

That’s not freedom at all.

This is what freedom is

Freedom is waking up when your body decides, but not getting up until you’ve held your soulmate against your heart. It’s stumbling into the kitchen and pandering over breakfast for an arbritary amount of time, unrushed. It’s reading whilst you eat, before you apply your eyeliner, or watching ASMR and chatting to your mom on the phone. It’s making a move in online chess against your dad, before making a move to get up and get dressed. It’s having the time to waste some time.

Freedom — it’s choice. Freedom is the choice, and the time, to live slowly.

Freedom starts with a choice, too. The choice to say no, not anymore, I won’t live like that. The choice to choose differently. It comes when you decide to begin your day at 11 and finish when you’re finished. It comes when you allow yourself a Wednesday off instead of the same old Saturdays. It comes when you discover your passion, follow your passion and let it consume you — not a by-product of the industrial revolution that Dolly Parton calls the 9 to 5. It comes when you learn to express yourself, in darkness and in light. It comes when you listen to your thoughts and get to know yourself.

It comes when you choose to slow down — and it finds you there in the present moment.

Freedom is in between the busyness. Freedom is the silence, the loading screen that you can patiently sit through, the long queue you don’t mind standing in, the change of plans that don’t rile you up and the ability to turn around and say, “actually, no, I’ve changed your mind,” without another thought.

But we have the freedom to choose already don’t we?

Sure, from a predetermined selection.

We can choose the day shift or the night shift. We can choose between already designed models of car. We can choose to live in this completely unaffordable paradise, or this council estate with a rent that we can just about meet. We can choose to buy this iPhone, as long as we remember we’ll need to choose the more updated one in a few years time. We can choose not to work (but we can’t choose it for long). We can choose to disagree with politicians (but we can’t choose who they are). We can choose what to say (but Twitter has to moderate it first).

In this day and age, we get to choose between what we think we deserve. Between what we’re given. Between what we know. We can “choose the path less travelled” and all that — which is great. But it’s still a path.

When do we get to go off-road?

That’s what freedom really is — existential off-roading

It’s choosing your own pace. It’s choosing to do differently. It’s choosing not to find that “work-life-balance” because they shouldn’t have to be separate entities. It’s choosing to love what you do, however rare that might be. It’s choosing not to live for money, but for life. It’s choosing to take the time to make the time. It’s choosing to be intentional. It’s choosing to be aware. It’s choosing to be here, in the moment, living inside of it.

Freedom is an illusion, at best. We live lives that booksellers would call a “choose your own adventure story.” Yeah, we can pick from certain options. We can navigate between various plots. But they’re already written, the pages printed and laid before us. If we let them be.

So choose differently. Write your own story. Have dessert for breakfast and don’t bleed away your finite moments into a job that you don’t adore.

Choose freedom, real freedom, slow freedom. Choose to off-road your own life.