Freedom*

Freedom. It is a big word. The post is hardly commensurate in length, breadth, and depth. Nonetheless I am free enough to decide to spend the Saturday to jot down the following. Free enough to have multiple waves of doubts over my career and dealing — maybe I am also free enough to carve a legacy of nothing? Anyway, here goes.

Freedom, again, a big word. It is a bigger word to me still; the scientist in me really feels sad that I am about to write about something without ever supplying a proper definition. The translators did us a dirty too: in modern Chinese and Japanese (and thus for people whose ways of thinking are shaped by the languages), Liberty and Freedom are both written the same, 自由 (zi4you2). I don’t always distinguish between them, as much as I probably should. This post mostly concerns about the latter concept, the state of being “free”.

I have appreciated a reasonable degree of freedom as you see sampled on this site. Tolkien’s “All who wander are not lost” is still on my cover page. Freedom to choose my major and to extend said choice with further professional training, freedom to spend my downtime (which seemed to ramp up in proportion during my PhD, sorry again, physics) on exploring and establishing my creative passions, and well, now, preparing to move on with my life at a research position, freedom to reflect with minimal burdens ahead of the real world.

As I look back, however, such freedom, the unforgettable background tint above all the changing scenes of my early adulthood, also feels frighteningly limiting, in more ways than I cared to count.

The flavor freedom that I have experienced can be described as “not forced into doing anything“, or, contrariwise, “I can do everything to my own will”. For humans with limited abilities and limited life outlooks, two issues arise naturally.

The first is responsibility. Being free to explore, as free as it gets, means being on one’s own, neglecting the possible guidance, accompaniment, and risk-assessed suggestions from the outside world. In the beginning this means wandering more without making progress, and all the mistakes, which there will be plenty, are directly attributable to my own choices.

Then there’s the powerlessness of choices. Compared to the space of “EVERYTHING™”, the set that I can truly achieve within my life is small, almost always insignificant. How many paths I try is still too few, too easily boring, too — compared to all that can be done, all that is done by all people, especially on short video sites — lacking. To face such a sentiment, as per the first point, to accept it is all my own fault. I chose unwisely, I wasted time, and I didn’t prepare hard enough to follow through a story path.

How did things get here?

I have for so long thought it’d be universally liberating to live in the so-defined free state, trying everything™, following my heart, paving my own paths in science and art.

But in doing so I risked removing the duvet weaved from much of my existence that temporarily shielded me from the freezing winds of the brevity of life and indifference of the universe. To always celebrate the lack of barriers is to face the abyss of meaningless head on, to spell “eternity” without success, to never feel I am good enough for anything.

Such a perceptually infinite goal — frozen in the sky like the sun or a faraway star — is rather potent at draining away the fuels that power a good life.

The period of time before and after my PhD submission and first round of academic rejection-seeking (See That Thing, Physics) saw some of the least controlled spending and eating behaviors of my life. Now that the dust settled and got put in boxes and shipped faraway, I knew I needed to assess how far adrift we are.

School had taught me that to achieve “freedom” (maybe not necessarily to the degree I have enjoyed), one must practice self-discipline, be strict on oneself. Misery now in exchange for happiness later; also superiority in front of the overindulgent, misbehaving, and lost, the undisciplined.

In the chaotic unfolding of my early adulthood, I’ve pushed the end date of misery into “eternity” on some aspects of my life, such as romance, physics, and reading while in some other fronts no head teacher will ever be there to end my happiness when “eternity” comes, hence the limitless collecting of toys and small flings with hobbies (Music and Chess in particular).

Maybe my idea of personal freedom was too low a level to dig for. Maybe it was too greedy. too far away and too abstract a meaning that it smells like the all-consuming void tucked behind it (this paragraph has been a Minecraft analogy, happy 15th anniversary). Maybe what I should seek is somewhere else, not a “reward” to self-discipline by one day relaxing said discipline, but a conclusive liberation of oneself from this enervating cycle.

It has now occurred to me that many people lead undisciplined lives not because they aren’t trying hard enough, but because their minds are bound by too many worries and troubles — indulgence is a natural consequence of the heavy shackles of being, and people need a way to catch their breath.

The converse may have been true too.

When one is not swayed by scores on a video game, can one choose to stop playing at any time.

Not subdued by limitless greed, one can then stay grounded and live in the moment.

Not controlled by overwhelming desires, one can act with empathy and passion but stop comfortably, knowing when enough is enough.

Easier examples…

Without being controlled by overeating, one naturally keeps their mouth in check.

Without being controlled by laziness, it becomes easy to start living actively.

Without being controlled by vanity, one gradually adapts a more peaceful mindset, less prone to extremes.

In this picture, the freer one is, the less likely they are to be driven purely by desire, and the more they can do as they wish without crossing boundaries — boundaries between oneself and the world, and between oneself and others (a point I did not bring up until now hah).

Thus, if one’s heart is not free, self-discipline won’t help, and the “freedom” one builds through self-discipline won’t either. It might help temporarily, but not in the long run. What causes my weight to rebound time and time again may directly have been the appetite, but I shouldn’t just neglect the sorrow in my heart.

Freedom is a big word. If you read out all that it meant concurrently it might as well be silent. Silence is loud.

The internal voices resound, “I could have been going to the gym”, “I could have been better at math”, “I could have been making more money…”

Still, I am lucky that what I say to myself internally isn’t “I could still have a better time.”

Don’t do drugs. A message on 4-20.