Are You Enjoying This Freedom?
To some, freedom means the opportunity to do what they want to do; to most it means not to do what they do not want to do. It is perhaps true that those who can grow will feel free under any condition.
Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition
We crave freedom.
No matter how much we have, we feel the pinch whenever it is limited.
During the pandemic, we couldn’t do many things such as eat at restaurants, travel by air, or visit loved ones at the hospital.
We also were required to do things we didn’t want to do such as wear masks, learn exclusively by Zoom, and show proof of vaccination to participate in many social activities.
Before the pandemic, we enjoyed the most freedom of any period in history.
Even low-income individuals had more financial resources than many wealthy people throughout history.
Even with all the restrictions of the pandemic, we still enjoyed a degree of freedom that our ancestors couldn’t believe was possible.
Just the idea of free time would have been foreign to them.
With free time comes the opportunity to learn and to develop new skills.
It is natural for us to want more and more freedom.
Yet even in the most restrictive times and places, we have the opportunity to learn and grow.
With access to the Internet, we can learn about philosophy from the Marvel superheroes. We can learn to speak Klingon. We can learn how to calculate the asymptote of an exponential function.
There are many more practical things we can learn as well.
Most of this training is free with an Internet connection.
We can also go old school and visit the library. You may have to look around a bit, but you will be able to find a technology that allows you to learn without batteries or even an Internet connection.
No matter how bad things get, we can learn and grow stronger.
That is a freedom that no one can take from us.
We are more aware of the freedoms we don’t have than the freedoms we do have.
More significantly, we don’t take full advantage of the freedoms and opportunities we enjoy.
One often overlooked freedom is the option to increase the supply of kindness and thoughtfulness in the world.
Just one kind word can send ripples of positivity into the world.
Let’s see how much disruption we can create today.
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