Today I began my day very, very depressed. It showed in my voice - it was totally devoid of any emotion. It was as if some robot was taking my place and my mouth was moving just to prove my existence. I rarely had felt so mechanized, so un-animated, so low. My mind was pretty much blank. I am not sure what to ascribe this to, was I tired, was I feeling guilty that I could not accomplish what I came here for? Or was it the end result of being lonesome all these weeks, all these months? Many explanations could be found... many explanations could be invented. Reason is a powerful tool, but just as it can bring somebody or somebodies forward, it could also drag them down into a hole. Reason, I think, just comes to justify our senses. In that sense, my blank-mindedness was perhaps the reflection of my blank-soulness.
Then, after a few hours spent at the park overlooking the Ocean, I came back close to where I live. I could see the mirroring in other people on the street's faces that I was looking mostly terrified. Terrified, anxious, worried that I will see others... Being conscious of these facial transmissions, I naturally began to dwell on them more and more. And only after I sat down and started thinking, I think I came up with a good reason to stop worrying and live my life to the fullest.
My thoughts centered on the idea of liberty. First I was thinking of the four priorities in anyone's life - I think everyone will agree these are only four.. one's labor, one's family, one's friends, and one's personal life (kinda like a catch-all for everything not included in the first three). Then I thought about Freud's division of principles into two fundamental ones: the principle of pleasure and the principle of reality. You could try to get instant gratification from your immediate impulses for self-indulgence. You can spend the whole day watching movies and listening to your favorite bands, eat like the Russian tzar, even go do drugs. You'll undoubtedly feel much better, because you do what you naturally are calling for, your needs are met instantenously. Now the meaning of "needs" could be scrutinized forever, but we can assume it's whatever one feels one should get. The thing about these needs is that they are always self-centered, whether our actions are deliberate or spontaneous. And then we have the principle of reality, which says we should postpone this instant gratification, so that we do what is useful, and reap the benefits of our adhesion to usefulness later on. A very basic example is that we work instead of loiter around, not because it's what we would do if given the choice, but because we can get a much greater satisfaction later on. Reality says that with little money you can get few things, and if you accrue some capital, you can buy a lot more intricate things. So I guess it could be equalized with the idea of investment - one invests his time in something useful, so that he could get the dividends, hopefully large, later on.
And then, after this pondering, I began to think about liberty. Yes, liberty, the thing that nobody ever thinks about under normal conditions. Why should we think about it, when it's everywhere around us? We see people act, in whatever fashion, and we think this is almost controlled by some invisible hand of acting the way you want to act. Well, that's part of the truth. What we don't think about is that everybody chooses to act the way he does. Might seem self-evident, but that not always has been so. For example, in regimes such as the totalitarians in Eastern Europe, or the fascist in Italy and Germany, the expression of one's beliefs could easily become punished, even capitally. Liberty, or freedom of expression and acting, is something we easily take for granted, because we are used to doing what we feel is right! And that would seem like another banality or platitude, if there wasn't something hidden around it.
Even though we seem to have liberty, in practice it is severely restricted. These restrictions emanate from various sources.. Politically, we are taught that doing what's prohibited by law must be evaded. We question some of these prohibitions, but when the state apparatus outlaws certain behaviors, the individual starts to feel that mass acquiescence should transfer to individual acquiescence. Even though you may disagree with your country's laws, you feel you should not be outspoken, because you think everyone else is supporting the status quo. And then you reconcile with the situation, and start to accept it. So you sacrifice your political freedoms for fear of condemnation.
Another restriction is the one that is social. We limit our behavior to the one that fits the expectations of those we care about. You know you will lose the respect of those that you respect, if you do something contrary to their understandings. Again, the fear of condemnation and ostracism makes you naturally limit your acts to those that will be likeable by others.
So far so good. Now comes the worst kind of freedom restriction. And this is the moral, the self freedom that often escapes us. After so many restrictions that come from others, the worst kind is the restrictions that we impose upon ourselves. When social and political impedements combine, we lose sight of what really we could do with our lives. When one loses faith in one's right to will, one also loses the numerous perspectives that lie ahead of him. Freedom is namely the ability to see all the choices that one has, and then exercising one's right to pursue the choice that fits him ideally.
In conclusion, nobody is free unless he deliberates on what one really is free to do.
