I’ve thought about this over and over again…
to give up everything and start fresh…
everytime I think about it,
it reminds me about a post I read by infinity,
to give it a bit of subtext, at the time when he wrote this, he was madly in love with his Australian princess,
“Poster 1: Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.
Poster 2: That’s definitely not how I understand freedom. “Freedom” to me is the freedom to choose your own direction and to express who you are.
Poster 1: Yes, that’s what freedom is when you start out. And as you choose your direction, decide and express who you are, acquire loving relationships, children, career or volunteer work which makes a difference and makes you happy, or whatever it is that’s for you, your life becomes rich and full and busy.
And there’s not so much room left to choose your own direction, without throwing away the direction you’ve already chosen and still like. And not so much room to decide and express who you are, unless you feel the need to change who you are every year or two like a new wardrobe, and then it’s not who you are anyway.
So there you are, having made the commitments you still feel are the right ones, chosen a direction you still like, expressed who you really feel, and still feel, that you are, but a little childish part of you would still throw it all away just so that you could start again from a clean slate and have all that freedom again. Even if you’d make all the same choices again and you still like all the choices you made, you don’t feel as free while you live them out as you did while you were choosing them.
So that’s what I mean. I don’t mean freedom is bad, it’s lovely. But it can go too far; if you’re in love with feeling free, you can’t commit to anything – a person, a career, an expression of who you are – because commitment makes you less free. You’ll never feel as free as when you had nothing.
I’m more “free” now than I’ve been in a long time, and I’m here to tell you that it sucks. I liked having someone to commit to, I liked having a reason to wake up in the morning. Are there burdens that come with giving up one’s solitary journey through life? Of course there are. But those burdens are nothing compared to the realization that living for yourself — and only yourself — does no good for anyone or anything else. It’s about as unsatisfactory as cooking a gourmet meal for myself. Sure, there’s a certain satisfaction in a job well done, but I don’t want to have to look in a mirror just to see someone appreciate the food.”
