Freedom

Freedom is a very powerful word. It has a very important meaning for every living thing, not only for us human beings. While all of us deserve to enjoy freedom, if we break the law, our freedom will be taken away from us when ending up in prison.

So, is freedom something we should take for granted wherever we are? Should there be any limits to it? Can having too much freedom be something good? Let’s dive into it.

I do remember when I was a kid I used to enjoy very much those Dungeons & Dragons fantasy books where you had the power of deciding the destiny of the main character. At some point in the story, you were given different options to choose from when facing a specific situation. Maybe you came across a huge spider so you could choose to fight it or run away, and depending on the option, you had to jump to this or that page and find out the outcome of your decision. This type of book may sound quite interesting, almost like playing a game inside of a book. However, depending on your choices, the character could end up dead after just a few pages or just left to rot in a prison, never to see the sunlight ever again. It could take you quite a few choices to find the right path towards the happy ending of the story. Eventually, I grew tired of this and so I started reading the same type of fantasy books, but this time they would be just a regular novel. And that’s when I really fell in love with books.

See, sometimes having too much freedom at hand is not as good as it may seem. As I see it when enjoying a piece of creativity, be it a book, a movie or even a videogame, having too much freedom can be a bit overwhelming and you may get lost in space while trying to find the next step towards the end of the plot. If the story is good, there’s no need for that amount of freedom as you will enjoy the ride anyway so I don’t see the problem of setting a proper path to follow, as long as, as I said, the story is good enough. This can be a particularly interesting debate when talking about videogames since there are so many ‘sandbox’ types out there, but that’s another story.

Let’s talk about living things now. I guess some of you have pets at home. Maybe a cat, a dog, or maybe both. Do you remember what you did during the early days when you brought them home? You went through the common-sense teachings about where to pee and poo, how to behave with people visiting, and so on.

In my personal experience, I have very good memories of the canary we used to have at home. His name -I’m guessing it was a male- was Fenix and while he was kept in a cage, we used to keep it open all day so he could fly around the house, enjoying like crazy when flying that long corridor back and forth. You could feel his happiness every time he did that and also when he was singing with such a beautiful voice. Apart from that, was there another consequence of so much freedom? Some droppings here and there, some feathers found around the house and stuff like that. Nothing too annoying really. A little price to pay in order to keep the fella happy and free.

Raising a child has some similarities to all that. Of course, raising a human being has many more responsibilities since you have to educate him/her, and doing it right is probably the most difficult thing. But again, how much freedom will you give to your child? Too much will make him/her a misbehaving and disrespectful individual, but too little freedom will make him/her be unhappy and emotionally-restricted, like a bird in a cage.

See, when I was a child I didn’t want to finish my dinner, my mother always said: ‘if you don’t eat everything, you will have to eat what’s left for tomorrow’s breakfast’. As you can guess, that was enough for me to leave the plate spotlessly clean. I don’t think that’s the way it works nowadays, though. And that’s why we have many cases of children abusing their parents, kids assaulting their teachers and even teenagers suing their parents because they don’t give them enough money to go out and have fun.

No matter what we talk about, be a pet, a child, or even a whole country, freedom is a very delicate subject. Too much of it will drive towards chaos, while too little of it will bring unhappiness, anger and probably some fight back. So where is the perfect balance?

Look, I’m not a big fan of politics. In fact, I don’t like it at all. I don’t understand much of it either and I don’t have the slightest interest in learning about it but I guess politics and politicians are key for the good health of a country. That being said, democracy is probably the best type of government for a country to feel free, since the power lays on the people, or so they say. However, how can we be so sure that that’s the best way of driving a country? How can we make sure that people know what’s best for them? We can’t.

The best example of an excess of freedom that comes to my mind is that historic mess called Brexit. The referendum was meant to be just a consultation, a means of stating Britons’ opinion about the idea of leaving the EU. That’s why many people -mostly from the ‘stay’ position- didn’t take this too seriously and didn’t even vote and many of the ones voting to leave didn’t think that their vote wasn’t going to make a big impact. Well, we all know how things ended up, right? I find this as the best example of giving too much freedom to the people of a country. The result of that is usually the same: chaos.

Now let’s go and pay a wee visit to China, one of the five communists countries left in the world where the government controls pretty much everything, and yet we all know how strong is the country and how fast is growing as an economic potency. Probably not everyone in China is happy to have just a child, due to the population overgrowth, and I’m sure there are many more restrictions that keep the people of that country far away from the concept of freedom we have in mind. However, the country keeps thriving day by day, there’s order and a clear path to follow. Everybody knows what you can do and what is forbidden. True, there’s limited freedom of speech, which at the same time is also controlled by the government but at any given time the government knows what’s best for their people, and what’s best for the country. People feel they are part of a huge project towards progress and they feel happy to be an important part of its perfect machinery.

Am I saying that communism should rule the whole world? No. What I’m saying is that democracy doesn’t seem to have enough control of the freedom provided to the people. But what the hell? Control and freedom are pretty much opposite concepts, how can we mix them up for the shake of the good health of a country and the people living within? That’s the key question we should be asking ourselves.

I currently live in the UK, a country where freedom is something pretty much untouchable. With the arrival of the coronavirus, this has been one of the countries with more cases and deaths. Why? Because the government took forever to shut pubs and restaurants, which are a great part of British culture. They were just afraid of making a hugely unpopular decision. Again, a choice between people’s happiness and their wellbeing. Is it better to be happy and ill -or dead- or be unhappy and alive to see the end of this pandemic?

I guess you see my point by now.

During my early days at school, I remember when a teacher said to the class: ‘alright, let’s make a drawing. Take a blank paper and draw what you want.’ I couldn’t feel more lost looking at the perfect white piece of paper in front of me. Minutes would go by with not a single specific idea of what to draw coming to my mind. But then, there was another teacher with a different approach: ‘take a blank piece of paper and draw a tree’. Oh, that was much better! There I was, drawing a magnificent apple tree with some birds flying in a beautiful sky with some clouds and a lovely sun in between.

We need freedom but we also need to put some boundaries to it. A path, some guidelines if you wish, so we can live in harmony with each other and with nature. For that and for being able to overcome difficult times like a global health and economic crisis, natural disasters and whatever mess we find ourselves into. Otherwise, we may lose ourselves in the chaos of free will where we behave like selfish bastards, only looking for our own wellbeing.

I just hope not to suffer a zombie outbreak any time soon. If just a tiny virus made such a huge impact on the entire globe, I don’t want to even imagine what a horde of brain-eaters would do.

I leave you to enjoy this ‘Free’ from Mother Mother 😉