Freedom.

I wrote this post about a month ago but it never felt like the right time to post it. On Friday I put my resignation in at my part-time job so I can spend more time writing and being with my family and that got me thinking about life and how we spend it. For those people who know me personally, you know I love to work. I love the responsibility, having money of my own, contributing to the household but I’ve been absolutely miserable for too long and it began to affect my home life and the way I did everything, even the mundane became even more hard work. When I went two weeks and only saw my man twice and when my kids cried because I had to go to work again and again, enough was enough. Facing this newfound form of freedom, I thought about this forgotten post and decided now is the time to share it. Enjoy.

 

I want to know what you think about freedom. Freedom of speech, freedom to move around, go where you want and do what you feel like doing. Do you live in a free country, state, city, village, town? Do you have the freedom to laugh, love, live? Maybe you’ve restricted your own freedom without even knowing it by becoming a slave to your work, career or job? Maybe you just feel restricted due to finances, relationship or family? I live in Australia and like to think we as a people have a fair measure of freedom. It’s up to us to choose the path we tread. I have the freedom to write what I want, where I want, when I want so long as I follow a publisher’s guidelines, work around my family, my kids, school, my part-time job. Where I want usually means the stolen hour after bed, which is when I wrote this post, freehand to use later. It got to 11pm and then I forgot my point...

I think it was something about the fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that prompted this topic. It surprised me no end when the six oc‘lock news announce that Cairo was under curfew (which in the history of man has never gone down well) and then the next day or so, the same reporter told me their internet had been turned off. Well, the quickest way to get news out and about these days is via Twitter or Facebook and even if you try to cut it off, word still travels. Put it on the net and a second later it’s gone viral. The juicier the topic, or injustice, the quicker the news spreads.

The world then glued itself to the telly and the net and waited for what would come next. The tent city, the riots in the streets, Hosni refusing to step down. Egyptians were fighting for their freedom even though they knew the next leader or government might not have been much better than the existing tyrant, it had to be better than what they were stuck with. So many Middle Eastern countries are in this fight on a daily basis, African nations ruled by guerrilla leaders and factions yearning for justice to break free, right over to North Korea living in their very own nightmarish hell the citizens don’t even comprehend. Most houses have no TV let alone computers or internet. News doesn’t go in and it rarely comes out. Then there’s the western world whose citizens democratically choose a leader through a (mostly) fair vote that says we are entrusting our safety to them. But in Australia, I don’t think about freedom in terms as an Egyptian or Afghani or a Korean. I’m already free in that sense of the word. Are you?

So what do you think about freedom? Do you come from an oppressed race of people who are told what to think, do and say? Are you reading my blog post from work, stretching the rules so you can snatch a minute to yourself? Do you think about freedom as I do in my safe, stable little world or do you think of it as going to the market without getting shot or blown up? I’d like to know what your definition is? What it really means to you.