Should We Be Free?
Tags: Self Improvement, Freedom, Psychology, Mind, Existentialism

Important matters to note in being free

Photo by Alice Triquet on Unsplash

Every action produces a reaction. Every decision brings consequences. Someone will be disappointed when we don’t fulfill a promise. We’ll suffer it too when we gain unfulfilled expectations. We and everything outside of ourselves influences each other.

There will also be consequences when we decide to be free; a condition of self-liberation from any pressure or compulsion as majority rule, custom, command, demand, style, opinion, and so forth, which threatens our self-esteem.

Each person has many different reasons for being free. Indeed we also have many definitions about it. Nevertheless, all of us absolutely will agree that what we mean “free” generally is “self-control”; we decide what we are going to do or how should our life be lived without any interruption.

Freedom is what humans naturally had, so that we desire freedom, no matter how much it is. That’s why we sometimes object to obey a rule or conform in the situation we don’t want to be involved with. We resist any threat that tampering our autonomy.

At some point, when the pressure has overflowed or a consciousness to take a self-path has come, we begin to consider and then decide to take our way of life. In this situation, we seek and arrange whatever we need to be used in our new direction.

It’s so pleasant, of course. When our long-imprisoned eagerness is finally free, we feel like a wind that can flow wherever we want. We quite have self-control.

But, it’s important to be remembered that we have both of individual and social nature. It will become a conflict when one of them is too heavy. We have known that the pressure of the social side independently can suck us. And then, what will we face when the individual side is being heavy — when we totally have self-control and be able to get rid of any affinity?

Guessing what the conditions will happen; that is lonely. Nietzsche will probably snigger me. But even in a normal condition we sometimes feel it, no exception for him. When you bring yourself toward your freedom, you go sailing toward yourself. You see nothing linked to the outside world other than yourself. There you are, in silence, solitude, and purity; the earliest point of your freedom.

However, the freedom which takes a long time eventually meets its surfeited point — no matter how much it is. And I don’t know actually which manner should be chosen when it happens. Nonetheless, I’m sure that balance is a good one.

We couldn’t live in only either social life on which we affiliate with others and the same rule or individual life without any affinity with them. The problem is that both of them like water and fire. How is it possible to combine or unite between the individual context and the social life, or precisely between pressure and freedom?

The key is our reason to understand which best choice fits with us most. Reasoning, understanding, and choice. This will be attuned to your principle of life, the philosophy you have, and the path you have chosen and live with.

Involved in the majority rules is not a threat of freedom if I have chosen it because of my own free decision (without any pressure). Our freedom lies in our ability to make a choice independently. It also means that critics, objections, and denials are possible to be propounded, for example to the rule itself.

Based on all the aforementioned points, should we be free? my answer is, yes, we should be. Freedom is an innate character of humans. We are able and deserve to decide our acts. We have self-authority which with it we could be asked responsibility.

Therefore, we always have a choice. It’s a kind of self-esteem, that is when you deal with general affairs and connect with the whole social life system without sacrificing yourself. We always have a choice, whatever it is, that is what naturally adheres within us, an innate character.

In addition, the proof that all of us are free to determine any choice is that the things such as general rule, custom, and anything that exist in the social life at the first were a choice too, a free decision from ones to align each other. You can experience it for yourself when you decide to make a special relationship with someone who you love.

The fact that we are free to make any decision for ourselves, leads our view to another fact, that we are required to choose. Finally, we arrive at one question: does the requirement to choose signify that we are not free?