What is freedom?

When you have choice anything you want, are you free?
If you don’t like school or job and when you suddenly got free with enough money, no need to go there, are you really free?

In my life I got free at some points and that made me think what is freedom.

If you take freedom literally when you got free from money, school and job, etc, yes you are certainly free.
But when you are free it might means having responsibility for your life.
Because you are free that you can live all your life without care and can die without doing anything you don’t like.
But when people got that kind of situation and are died doing nothing without caring anything, does they think their life was really free and happy?

I often felt time passes by very quickly when I got free.

If you are student or worker, you have to wake up fixed time and someone tells you something to do and you have schedule everyday.
But once you got free from all of those things, you don’t need to wake up in the early morning and no one tells you what to do everyday.
It looks like great thing first but that means this time you have to do all the things you were told in school or workplace on your own.
No one helps you as long as you live alone and if you messed things up you have to cover it by yourself, no boss cover it.

I feel like it is rather free when I belonged to school or company than free of them.

Don’t we feel free when holiday comes when we are student or worker?

I take freedom from another point of view.

When I have dinner in restaurant and I select what I want, am I free?
When I select favorite color for my room decoration, am I free?
When I select, choice, buy anything I want, am I free?

I often think just I choice or do things on instinct it is not freedom rather controlled by instinct.
If I say I am just brainwashed by human instinct.

When I do it I feel I’m not free rather being controlled and tied to human instinct.
When I make a choice not only on instinct but on rational brain, I feel I’m free in real meaning.

If I like dark color and choose to buy black sofa I would be happy, feel comfortable.
But if I also take other point of view into account such as how my guests feel when they see dark color and sit in the sofa (I’m not saying how I am being looked at by others by my choice of black color but how the color effects people’s feeling)

To the contrary, if I was the one who are always worrying about guest’s feeling and choose to buy white sofa as always while my favorite color is black.
Does that mean I made a free choice?

I like sweets I would be happy if I order sweets after dinner.
But if I give a little thought at the same time such as my health, body control, etc.

I feel like I’m in the cage of freedom when I just live freely on my instinct.
When I choice and live beyond human instinct I feel real freedom.

Author : Hiroshi