Allow Me to Digress

If there’s one thing I remember about "freedom" from my philo class a few years ago,it is this: that freedom is not being able to do whatever you want but doing what you know is right.  Which philosopher said that escapes me now.  I tried looking it up in google but to no avail.  (If you know who, let me know. I’m sure I am not the one who came up with that.

Whether freedom is doing whatever I want, or doing what I think is right, I may think that I am not so free either way.  What keeps me from doing whatever I want is the welfare of other people (not that I’m thinking of doing something really bad to hurt them hehe), and what keeps me from doing what I think is right sometimes is my own human frailty.  Ok, no one to blame but myself.  So can I conclude I am not free from myself?

Before you get further confused and before I expose my stupidity, let me just write about two people I just remember now that I’m writing about freedom.  I’m talking about holocaust survivors Viktor Frankl and Corrie Ten Boom. 

Viktor Frankl.  I haven’t finished his book "Man’s Search for Meaning" yet.  I started it 5 years ago by the way, and must have also misplaced it, so there… I probably won’t be finishing it. (Hmmm… maybe I don’t really love to "read" books; I only love the feeling of starting to read a book, considering the ratio of books I start to read and books that I actually finish.  Anyway, that’s another topic.)

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedom—-to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. ~ Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, p. 86 http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~eusher/quotations/frankl.html 

Corrie Ten Boom.  Now her biography is one of the books that I’ve finished and even read more than once - "The Hiding Place."  It is one of my favorite books (which I did include in my friendster profile hehe :)  I’m trying to look for my favorite quotes from the book in the Internet but then, again, I can’t find it.  I’ll post it next time then.  http://www.corrietenboom.com/

Just a thought… whoever says one has no choice is lying.  We always have choices, at least two, and we are free to choose. Free will.  God’s gift to mankind.  Maybe, it would be better if he were to say, "I am left with no better choice but this choice I’m choosing."  Factors that maybe affecting that choice are faith, conscience, responsiblity, among others.

Bottomline is, freedom is not dependent on circumstances… it’s all in the mind. hehehe :) 

Now I’m thinking I would have sounded smarter by just ending this post on the first paragraph than going on and on… But then again this is a blog and I’m free to write whatever I want, at my own expense, and you are free to think whatever you want to think about me. See, what keeps from really writing about whatever I want is you, the reader!  Now this post has to end in some way - by putting a period perhaps?  Ok.  There.  The end.    

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