Why freedom isn't enough
- 3 mins
Free desert
Once I got free from a particular, toxic environment, I came to realization that freedom is not enough, that freedom on its own is not purpose. There’s just nothing there. Freedom on its own is nothing. Freedom sounds good, because it’s been detached from the pain of where you felt like you didn’t belong.
Most people don’t think that they belong where they are and want to be free of that. They want the discomfort to go and they think that the lack of discomfort is happiness, that that’s home. Unless you start to figure out who you are, what you are, what your values are, groups and communities will resemble holidays, or way stations, where you are free from something simply because there is no stress anymore.
Being perpetually free is almost like an ill-fitting nothing. A desert. You’re sleepwalking. No colour in your world. Grey type of Mr. Anderson and never a curious enlivened Neo. In short, you need to find your life. Echo chambers that just stimulate positive aphorisms without actually looking at ethics and how you can take action, particularly you as a person. Until you start taking little steps of courage in that direction, doing something, going somewhere, you’re just left with free nothing.
Introverts, Extraverts
There’s a lot of extraverted people, because they simply don’t know what they want and who they are. Most people are social not because they just love being around strangers and crowds, but because they haven’t found their fit. They love that potentiality of searching, shopping. Sure, they’re pointing in the right direction, as they are searching, but they get addicted to the anticipatory drug (dopamine) coming from variety. Variety of “my salvation is just around the corner, just over the horizon”, forever.
Most people are in freedom deserts. Shopping, hooking up, netflix, traveling, video games. These things are great and entertaining, but it’s almost like you’re sleepwalking in a job that you don’t like, that doesn’t suit you. You live for the weekend where you can just relax for one, but then you have to repeat not fitting where you’re supposed to fit on monday.
What’s attractive about this passing of the time loop of freedom it’s not just the potentiality. It’s just a matter of time before I monkey branch onto “Happiness” (with capital “h”). In the dopamine state of anticipating happiness all the time and never actually doing something, finding out what you like doing, you’re forever not committed to do anything. There’s always possibilities. Waking up to the feeling of life getting better, but an underlying anxiety of not having a map and not knowing exactly “how” is unnerving to me. I can’t sit in that space for very long.
Dance without a mirror
The only thing I know about today’s relationships is: I dance the waltz while they tap dance. Different style, different steps, different dynamics, different beat… Nothing matches at all. Should I learn to tap dance?
That introspection made me realize, that introverts know what is their dance. They are self-aware. They need no mirror. For them, freedom can become something more than a free desert.
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PS Before you question my authority, please remember I’m a professional teacher. You should always listen to teachers 🙃