What does it mean to be free? It feels like the very concept of freedom we're operating with isn't really ours but an amalgamation of definitions, ideas, and experiences we've inherited from others. When we say "I feel free," are we describing our actual experience, or are we simply matching our state to what we've been taught freedom should feel like?
Consider how we understand choice. We pride ourselves on making "free choices," yet these choices are invariably bound by the information the world has fed us. Heston Blumenthal's journey into experimental cuisine wasn't born in a vacuum - it was sparked by a specific experience in a French restaurant. Without that meal, that precise moment of inspiration, would his "free choice" to pursue innovative cooking ever have existed? Our choices are like tributaries flowing from the rivers of experience that came before us.
This borrowed nature of freedom reveals itself in how we recognize it in others. When we see someone running through snow with childlike abandon, we label it as "free" because it matches a template of freedom we've been given - the carefree spirit, the disregard for social norms, the pure expression of joy. But is this really freedom, or just another performance of what we've been told freedom looks like?
There is this Tamil song which has a profound line that I always carry with me that says "viduthalai venuma oru muttala Iru" (only a fool can achieve true freedom) takes on new meaning here. Perhaps the fool is free not because they've achieved some pure state of liberty, but because they've momentarily stepped outside the inherited frameworks that define what freedom should look like. They're not performing freedom according to anyone else's script.
This brings us to a paradox: to be truly free, must we first free ourselves from our inherited understanding of freedom itself? But how can we even conceive of such a liberation when the very tools we use to think about freedom are borrowed? It's like trying to imagine a new color while being limited to the spectrum we've always known.
The real tragedy isn't that we're not free - it's that we evaluate our freedom using measuring sticks we didn't create. We judge our choices against frameworks of understanding that were handed to us rather than discovered through our own experience. When someone says "you can be anything you want to be," they're usually offering a menu of pre-approved possibilities rather than true boundless potential.
So where does this leave us? Perhaps true freedom begins with the recognition that our very conception of freedom isn't our own. Maybe it starts with questioning not just our choices, but the frameworks within which we make those choices. The most radical act of freedom might be to stop trying to be free in ways others have defined and instead explore what freedom might mean if we could experience it without inherited definitions.
This isn't a call to reject all influence - that would be impossible and perhaps undesirable.Rather, it's an invitation to hold our inherited understanding of freedom more lightly, to remain aware of how our choices are shaped by the experiences and definitions we've been given, and to stay open to moments when we might glimpse something that doesn't fit any pre-existing template of what freedom should be.
