The Freedom To and The Freedom From

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With freedom comes responsibility; when Nick Fury says this statement to Spider Man, it resonated with the 12 year old me at a level that I now as a 21 year old individual understand much better.

When I look at little babies around me, I see that independence for them means the freedom to put their teeny fingers inside electric sockets or bite and lick away anything and everything they might find. Sigmund Freud describes this phase as the age of the Id, the harbinger of the notorious carnal desires of humans to get what they want, the exact moment they wish to get them.

As a kid grows old, their ego kicks in. This term ‘Ego’ that I use here does not translate into the commonsensical understanding of the term as intense and blind pride. In Freudian terms, this word is in fact the exact opposite of the common understanding. Ego, herein, is the voice of reason in every human. One that tells us when to do what we desire to do.

Our school systems with its strict schedules are breeding grounds for Ego in the child, which teaches him when to play, when to study, what to ask and what not to. It in a way curbs the freedom and independence we hold so dear to our selves.

An adolescent human is the most idealistic minded yet irrationally behaving individual we can ever find. Every teenager tries to break free from the shackles of the societal norms around oneself, including those of one’s family. For them, freedom is a striving to become their own person, write their own story.

Young adulthood on the other hand is more nerve wracking than all the previous phases combined. It is the time when we actually get the freedom and independence we have desired and fought for, all our past lives. And when we finally get it; we are petrified as to how to make use of it. It is in reality, the moment when a mother eagle drops off her chicks from her nest on the highest cliffs, hoping that her babies are old enough to fly on their own and learn to survive.

Being in this phase petrifies me too. Given the freedom to vote, the freedom to decide what I wish to do at least eight hours a day for the next forty years of my life, what to wear, who to be friends with, who to love. Being shackled for so long and suddenly set free, I sometimes feel like a domesticated wildcat left to fend for itself in the jungle for the very first time.

And even as the world around us is terrifying, it is exciting too. We may not know what we end up doing tomorrow, let alone a decade from now. I am sure we crave for the security of simpler times of our past, where we didn’t have to worry so much. And as we move forward to finally learn how to pay our bills and file our taxes, I pray we learn how to use what we fundamentally desired for, right from the second we first tried to put our nimble fingers in the electric socket- The Freedom to (do what we desire) and the Freedom from (the forces that have been holding us back till now).

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