Absolute Freedom
People should be free .I suppose there are few in this world who would disagree with that statement but I wonder how many of us really consider what it means. I don't get a day that goes by, that I don't hear someone declaring about how they are free of , or free to do something and I guess ,that's a good thing. Truth is, I never really thought much about it until recently. When you lived most of your life ( in my case more than half of my life ) in the land of the free like the good old USA ,it is easier to take freedom for granted .It was just a few years ago that I realized something .It wasn't free.It wasn’t free at all.Land of the free doesn’t exist . I realized just how much my life is being dictated by other things. There's the obvious stuff like the bills that show up in the mailbox and there are the less obvious things like having a phone that was once a symbol of freedom. Now, it feels like a leash and it's amazing how quickly you will buy into something that makes things seem a little easier or makes us feel just a little more secure. Call it dependence or addiction, call it whatever you want ,I'll be honest ,I was pretty happy being led by its hand but there's just this one thing .You see,dependence is essentially the opposite of freedom and when you realize that ,all the junk you surround yourself with ,all the stuff you carry around with you, all that stuff can start feeling like chains and the life that's grown up around you, can really start to resemble like a prison. And that is a problem that a lot of people do not realize. I begin to understand that too many decisions that dictated my life are being made by too many people and too many things. These doesn't necessarily have our best interest in mind. It's time to do something about it .But there is this funny thing about freedom. It doesn't come with safety straps and it sure isn't afraid to make a fool out of you. There must be a dozen roads that led me to this place. Some of them softer than others, others caused some bruising or another but mainly ,it was the relentless pursuit of the ego that led me to this place.The reality was, I was at the crossroads and under my feet. All of my life , I was perpetually a recovering idealist , still jaded and bruised from what the world offered me. Compounded by the problem of society’s spiritual meltdown that hit me square in the nose like a dragon. I became a fool at my own expense mainly because I bought into these,thinking that it will solve whatever I needed solved.A little bit of a tough lesson to learn but I guess ,good things come from learning the hard way if you look at it in that perspective. All the plans and security had me tied down to the ground and so I found myself living a story that I didn't want, a story I didn’t want to share.The same story I have discovered so many others are living but yet refusing to change course and continue cruising at altitudes way beyond their reach,You know it. It's the one where everything looks great on the outside but on the inside, we are directionless and broken.It’s a life plagued by commuter traffic ,stress headaches and a car littered with fast-food wrappers like so many .I spent too much time putting hope in the false Gods of career and image. Stressed out and overextended, I had to make a choice .Keep walking the same road or try different path ,one of my own choosing .In a world that's constantly pushing for bigger and faster,complicated and fake ,I was looking for smaller, slower, simple and real. Living the uncluttered life far outweighs a life saturated with things big and small.Owning and surrounding one’s self with toys and stuff comes with responsibility that you will be answerable to. In the end, you might not like the answer they present to you.Yes, there is nirvana in simplicity.
