Personal Freedom

What is freedom? Allow me to share.

In society today, as it was in the past, a lot of emphasis is placed on personal accomplishments. People would push their children to become doctors, lawyers, nurses and other professionals. You see, educational attainment is the the measure of a man from where I'm from. If you have no diploma your are less than a person and nobody respects you. People love to boast, "Look at me! I'm a fucking lawyer! I'm better than all of you!" or "My son is a doctor not like that little shit you call a son of yours." When education tragically became less important and we moved on to our consumer culture, emphasis was shifted from educational attainment to personal possessions. "Look at my car! It's a goddamn Ferrari! Envious?" or "My plasma screen TV is bigger!" Now things are getting desperate and people are finding even more creative ways to one-up each other. "I'm cooler than you! I'm better at this than you!" People always want to get ahead.

This begs the question, "To what end?" Why do we feel the need to be better than others? The easy answer is insecurity, insecurity with the self. I believe the world is full of insecure people who feel the need to boast even the most trivial of things. Insecure people who can't even customize a car right yet roar the engine screaming, "LOOK AT ME!" Insecure people who proudly talk down to their students or children about how awesome it is to be dentist. Insecure people who arrogantly insist we cannot possibly understand the plight of the noble poor because we are not as humble as them.

Society unfairly places standards on people. Even the idea of beauty is defined by skin whitening ads and fashion gurus. The rich are glamorized as they jet around from Paris to Tokyo eating in the finest restaurants in the fanciest clothes. "Be like them." Etiquette and manners are expected sometimes unduly. People should respect the politicians, nay, fear them or else. Even teenagers hold themselves to stupid standards separating themselves from "nerds" and behaving and dressing as they see in MTV going "emo" or whatever trendy bullshit is on nowadays. I hate it. I hate society and their goddamn standards.

What is freedom? Freedom for me is freedom from these meaningless standards. To live not for other people's or society's expectations but your own. Freedom is to stop labelling others, imposing standards, judging them and putting them in categories . Freedom is to stop living in fear of how others label you and living life as how others would demand you to. Freedom is to conquer the angst of thinking that you are somehow not good enough, inadequate and unworthy. Freedom is to actually believe that you believe in yourself. Freedom is to finally be at peace with yourself, to be content with what you have, to have no need to prove yourself to others and to share your peace with others. To hell with the rat race, I want to be free.