Freedom Hallucinations

This morning I got up with some hallucinations about freedom and didn’t want to let them go, so I’m capturing and captivating freedom here J

Being a freedom advocate, I love to see it and apply it in everything. But what is freedom and how we know we are free or not. For me freedom is freeing yourself of anything you haven’t chosen. Freedom goes hand in hand with choice.

When we were kids, choices were made for us. We went to school our parents chose for us. We followed a religion we inherited from our parents. We lived with people chosen for us. Every choice was made for us by the older and wiser people.

But when we start growing up, we may or may not question everything chosen for us. We start getting rebellious on everything. We don’t want to listen to wise choices made for us. We want to think and consider ourselves. This is what people call adolescence phase. Parents are always afraid of this phase; which takes place between 10 and 20 of age.

For me my adolescence was different, instead of making my own choices, I was looking for reasons to accept others’ choices for me; knowing that they are the wiser and of course believing in their sincere intentions.  I was a very obedient adolescent.

However, when I got to the higher school phase, I made the first choice in my life. I chose my faculty all of my own. I had no objections from the wisers. However, I put a challenge on myself. The faculty I wanted to join didn’t necessitate a very high score for my higher education certificate. However, I challenged myself to get the highest scores that enable me to join the highest graded faculty. I did it and got the highest degrees, however I chose to leave the 1^st and 2^nd degree faculties and join the 3^rd degree faculty I wanted, regardless of wiser people’s choices for me. I faced many objections. And I felt hey that’s the first decision I’m taking in my life. If I go back to my childhood phase, I would have chosen a different school also.

I don’t see why parents perceive the adolescent phase dangerous. Is it because their offsprings are heading elsewhere? Is it because they might start discovering things and life facts parents don’t want them to discover? Is it about control out of love? They think that they won’t be able to protect their kids from life tides? What is it that makes people freak from the adolescent phase; that instead of becoming their children’s friends they become their enemies? Let your adolescents practice their freedom before their desire for freedom become a stubborn attitude and rejection of anything coming from you even if they know and believe it is the right thing for them. Wake up parents.

People think I’m crazy when I say I would never be able to raise my children on certain beliefs or order them to take certain decisions. I can’t impose anything on them even when they are just kids. I think if they want to play in the streets, I won’t object. I want them to discover themselves, make their own choices even if they later regret them. I want them to choose and make mistakes. I want them to experience freedom of choice in everything to know how to live on their own and face real life tides.

If I talk about the freedom of choosing your religion, which is a taboo in our Arab societies, I would say that I’m a Muslim in mind, heart and soul. However, I’m not a Muslim because I was born a Muslim. I searched for logical answers and found them in Islam. I see logic in everything in Islam. This was the second choice I made. I see a logical explanation in every principal, incident, command, word, etc. in my religion. For me Islam is not any more an inheritance, it is a matter of freedom of choice.

Back to the adolescent phase, do you think we have this phase once in life? Of course not. It is only that the first time you encounter your adolescence, you find everyone interested in interfering with it because you are just a kid. This is the first “So you think you are free?!” phase.

With time, you may start to question everything in life. Have I chosen this job for myself? Have I chosen this position? Have I chosen to be workaholic? Have I chosen to go with my parents' or work bosses' desires? Am I fulfilling people’s expectation of me? Are their expectations mine? Are they part of my own desires? Do I love my job? Do I have a role in life that I chose? Am I the one who chose to be obedient to my parents or this is the social norm that I have to follow? Is this the place I want to be in or it is where I just am? Are all my life conditions imposed on me and I’m just coping or am I the one who chose everything?

I went and still going through this phase at my late twenties and with the start of my thirties. Psychiatrists call it the Thirtieth Crisis as one of my friends told me. I started to question everything and why I’m not satisfied with my stable life. I found out it is not my own life. It is simply what others expect of me. It is just the life that I found myself in. It is an imposed life, not by my parents only this time but by the circumstances of life as well as people’s and society expectations, which I didn’t give myself time to consider or make my own choices about. I realized I have to free MYSELF BY MYSELF to think clearly of what I WANT. I freed myself of people’s expectations, social norms, my attachments, my place, everything that may block my thinking of what I want. I thought about it and realized I need a challenge, as I challenged myself in my first minor adolescence phase.

Then I asked what kind of challenge. If I need a challenge I have to choose it. I chose my challenge which is completely the opposite of my stable life. I asked myself is this what people expect from me? The answer was absolutely NOT. Do I really want it? Absolutely YES. Am I ready to discuss it with people who don’t expect it? Absolutely NOT. Why? Because no one understands me as I understand myself. I want to take the challenge with no guardianship. Do I want to succeed in my challenge? Yes. But what are the success criteria? I’m the one to choose them. What if I fail? So what, I would learn to make better choices. SO WHAT? GO AHEAD. This is my OWN thirtieth adolescence. It came with stronger desire for freedom and release and a realization that freedom is never granted. It is you who make it.

One of things that makes people think I’m crazy is that I don’t have any particular opinion about people. It comes from my belief in freedom. We are free people, each one has to choose his own being. I don’t have the right to say this is right or wrong for anyone, or even have a particular opinion about or judgement on anyone. I’m not him or her. I didn’t practice his or her way of freedom. When people tell me that you have to advise people when they do wrong, I say hey people what is right and what is wrong?! It is us who choose what is right and what is wrong. If only I was asked about my opinion about a situation, I would say in MY OPINION this is wrong or right because I BELIEVE so since I SEE the situation from MY OWN PRESPECTIVE; which in return shouldn’t necessarily be the same perspective of the other person. If he or she takes my perspective it is ok, if not it is ok too. It is HIS or HER OWN freedom of choosing the perspective he or she wants.  That’s it!