Freedom Is Overrated
Freedom Is Overrated
But I sometimes wonder: freedom from what? And freedom for what?
To a five-year-old, freedom might mean eating candy all day!
A thirteen-year-old might want the freedom to play video games from morning until night.
As adults, we may consider those choices immature. But that is the point:
freedom also needs a definition for each of us.
If we don't really know ourselves, then freedom can simply give us more room to follow our impulses, habits, fears, desires, and conditioning.
So what kind of freedom are we actually seeking?
Maybe the deeper spiritual journey is not about becoming free to do whatever we want. Perhaps it is about becoming free from the unconscious forces that keep telling us what we want and when we no longer have to be driven by every desire, fear, expectation, or social definition of success?
Until we have looked deeply within ourselves—through self-inquiry, meditation, healing, contemplation, or whatever path genuinely opens that door—we do not even know who the “self” is that wants to be free.
And perhaps that is why traditions that speak of deep meditation, samadhi, or enlightenment don't simply promise more choices. They point toward something deeper: freedom from the compulsive need to chase, resist, possess, prove, or become.
Maybe freedom isn't having everything we want. Maybe freedom is discovering what is truly worth wanting.
Perhaps, then, freedom isn't overrated. Perhaps our ordinary idea of freedom is.
🙏
~ Neel
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