(this post is a first draft - any feedback from y'all would be appreciated.)
Harry Houdini, the younger of our two cats, knows he can get a full 9-17 minutes out of me by leaping on my lap.
This is because I've got "free" time.
At any moment, I might get up and weed the garden, eat some snow peas off the vine, or take a walk. I have no due dates, bills due, honey-dos, or any other doo-doo.
I've got freedom. All the freedom I can swallow.
Or do I?
If, as the song goes, freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose, then I am absolutely not free.
Take my frequent random love-fests with Mr. Luna and Harry.
Not free.
My cats came loaded with extras:
- a ton of extra beard-seeking hair,
- an alarm clock feature (time to get up and let me out)
- free dead birds
- free cat puke
- vet bills (extra charge)
- food bills (extra charge)
- a doting owner (my girlfriend)
These things are all now responsibilities - things I used to think of as anti-freedom.
But they aren't really, of course. Really, they are par for the course.
They are reality.
If you want to be free, have things to lose.
Don't get it twisted. I'm not saying you need to make money and accumulate material things to be free.
Freedom is the Jabberwocky and the Eggman
As a political philosopher (do I get to use that title with a BA?), I've thought a bit about the "F-word" - in fact, I've written a few papers on it - and I've come down to one very important hypothesis about the word and its role in our lives today.
The word freedom rarely means shit.
Or it means too many things.
Off the top of my head, here are a few:
- free from imprisonment
- free economy
- unhindered
- individual freedoms
- available
- without cost
Freedom is fuzzy. Just like the word happiness, it means different things at different times, and sometimes different things at the same time.
For example:
IF
More choice = more freedom.
AND
Less consequence = more freedom
WOULDN'T
More choice = less consequence?
Not so. Witness, our little Harry Houdini.
The cats came with extras like my girlfriend. My girlfriend came with extras, like the ability to use the pronouns "we" and "our," (as in "We like to work in our garden"), an amazing set of recipes, a buoyant spirit, and a requirement that the seat be left down.
These extras, beings and things, brought more consequence to my life, but I don't feel less free.
They limit my choices (at least on the vet day or when I want to leave the seat up) but I don't cry out for freedom.
I have so much more to lose. Why is it that I feel so free?
For me, for you, for everyone, unless you have a clear definition - saying you want freedom is like saying you want
Jabberwocky or
the Eggman - nonsense.
Redefining Free
I started this post with the idea that freedom can be a bad thing. For example, flying your plane into a building to be free of taxes, being paralyzed by "freedom" of choice because there are too many choices, or thinking that more choice is automatically a good thing.
If you are going to go after freedom, or if you are going to make a choice because you have the idea that it will make you more free - be careful.
Define what freedom means to you. Come up with better terms.
For me, freedom means
the ability to do the things I love, like be distracted by cats or sunny days, or to spend a day learning about the history of the
wingding.
This definition is just as nonsensical as any other, but it has one advantage. It requires that I ask myself an important question. Before thinking about how to get free, what will make me free, or what I can buy to gain more freedom, I have to discover something very important...
What do I love?
Forget about freedom, forget about maximizing choice and minimizing consequence.
Find out what you love.
