Freedom to be free!

I remembered this Shahrukh Khan featuring advertisement which used to always show up while I used to be watching cricket matches. It used to go as..."Freedom to be free, azaadi dil ki..", I guess it was Pepsi's advertisement. Well, as of now, I am living in country which is all about free will. Have you ever wondered about the freedom to be free? I always knew about freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom to life etc, but this is interesting enough. We are bound in so many ways, directly and indirectly in several of our actions. Thanks to culture, ethics, society, our upbringing and what not. My parents, friends and a lot of people around think that I am a very independent person. I probably am financially, economically independent. Mentally and physically too may be I am independent. Emotionally, I dont think anyone of us, including me is independent, atleast I am not. Freedom is never free, it is always accompanied by some constraints. For every freedom we enjoy, we do have some constraints and restrictions. As children, we have bounds created for us by parents, and schools etc. As we grow up, it doesnt really stop, it goes on and on and beyond a point in life, we start creating bounds ourselves. And think about it, even freedom of thought is not completely free, we have several self created blocks which prevent us from thinking beyond a certain point or atleast discussing openly about what we thought. Those who break free from these bounds in some cases make it big in life. 

Lately, often, I wish, I could be free, free with no bounds. Free to think as I like, free to make decisions as I want,  free from expectations, free from guilt, free from regret, free from feeling bad for others and for my ownself. As easy as all this sounds while writing, in real life, I know, getting to this would be like becoming a monk. Philosophically, Free Will is a concept used to refer to the belief that human behavior is not absolutely determined by external causes, but is the result of choices made by an act of will by the agent. Such choices are themselves not determined by external causes, but are determined by the motives and intentions of the agent, which themselves are not absolutely determined by external causes. In Devil's Advocate ( Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves movie) free will is preached by John Milton and Kevin Lomax shoots himself saying, free will and he could do as he wanted without feeling sorry for it. While all this is easy in a movie, in real life, it is far from possible for most sane people. So do we have the freedom to be free? I dont think we do. But there might be people who will argue with me saying that it depends what do you want to be free of. As far as I know, freedom doesnt come free, if you want emotional freedom, then I guess you have to become free of emotions, but that comes with its associated gains and losses. Everything has a cost, but I think we have to learn to make the smart tradeoffs such that we enjoy we can enjoy our freedom to the maximum possible.

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