Celebrating 60 Years of freedom

On the eve of Independence Day as I finally get “free” from my work and begin my homeward tread, I can sense a joy all around me. There are banners all over the place; tricolor posted here and there, people holding various events to celebrate the 60^th year of “independence”.

I reach home thinking about the meaning of the word “freedom” .What does it mean to different people, or to the human populace in general?

Well, I search dictionary.com and find no less than 17 entries. Some of them are as follows:

1. the state of being free or at liberty rather than in confinement or under physical restraint.

2. exemption from external control, interference, regulation, etc.

3. the power to determine action without restraint.

4. political or national independence.

5. personal liberty, as opposed to bondage or slavery: a slave who bought his freedom.

6. exemption from the presence of anything specified (usually fol. by from).

7. frankness of manner or speech.

8. Philosophy. the power to exercise choice and make decisions without constraint from within or without; autonomy; self-determination.

Yes we are definitely not under physical restraint ,yes ours is a free nation , and yes we are not under any slavery , But , are we free from all restraints , from within or without ?Especially from within ?Do we make our everyday decisions without any constraint ?

An average human being chooses from the available options and is content to think that he/she is “free”. We “choose” a soap out of a shelf full of soaps in supermarket and think we were free to make a choice. We choose an occupation from the available range of occupations (profitable of course) and think we made a choice. But are those decisions free from restraint? We are restrained by the available soaps or professions? Can we choose something which doesn’t exist on the shelf?

We have a freedom of speech, but we always think not only twice but a thousand times before speaking things that really matter. Sometimes we may not speak of those things at all. Why not? Are we not free to speak? We are again restrained by our understanding, our training. Can we really speak our minds without the fear of hurting others or oneself?

We have right to vote. To choose our leader. We have hundreds of signs printed on the ballot and we choose one of those. One of the available people. One of the scumbags. One of the corrupts. And we are happy to think that we had a right to “choose”. Can we choose the type of person we want as our leader?

But do we really have a choice on the events of our lives. Can we choose our parents? Can we choose our siblings, relatives? Can we choose our Genes? Can we choose to undo things from past? Can we choose the time of our birth? We don’t seem to even have an option here.

We are restrained & constrained by our destiny, our thoughts, our values, our intellect, and our available choices in life.

We are free as a nation maybe, but as an individual we can never be.