Skip to main content

Free Yourself


I am not free to jump from the balcony of my residence.  If I jump, I may break one of my limbs. Because I stay on the first floor. 

Freedom does not mean permission to do whatever I like.  “We are free only where we know,” said Will Durant [The Story of Philosophy].  Knowledge gives freedom.  Knowledge is freedom.

Most of us make the mistake of thinking that doing what we like to do is freedom.  What we like is determined by our knowledge or awareness or consciousness level.  The rapist in Delhi whose number keeps rising by the day (in spite of the equally rising number of religious leaders) thinks he is free to rape a child. His knowledge or consciousness level is too low to understand why his act is based on an incomplete understanding of himself.  

Passion is good and necessary for any human being.  Anyone without passion will be as good as a rock in the denuded Himalayas.

Freedom is not freedom passions. 

Freedom is freedom from uncoordinated or un-understood passion.  Freedom is the freedom from the thief within me.  From the politician in me.  From the assaulter in me.  From the rapist in me...

Freedom does not make me a superman who is free from social restraints.  Freedom does not make me a Spiderman of filmy heroism, either.  Freedom does not make me a godman or godwoman who will condemn other people as irredeemable... or see oneself as capable of working miracles in any institution.

Freedom is understanding myself properly and working toward my own self-fulfilment.  Unfolding my individuality.  Achieving my potential to its fullest.  Becoming what I can.  What I really wish.  What my heart really wishes.  And helping other individuals unfold their potential in the process.

In the words of Will Durant, “To be great is not to be placed above humanity, ruling others; but to stand above the partialities and futilities of uninformed desire, and to rule one’s self.”

To rule one’s self.

To rule one’s self.  That’s the real freedom. That’s the real power. 


PS.  This post is dedicated to a person whose speech I listened to this morning.  Yet another speech ad nauseam.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

  1. Easwar ArumugamApril 23, 2013 at 9:35 PM

    I agree that knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery.

    Nice, thought-provoking read.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 23, 2013 at 9:48 PM

      That knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery is ancient wisdom, Easwar ji. I was just repeating it in different words. People simply refuse to understand it, you see.

      Delete
  2. Vishal AroraApril 23, 2013 at 10:58 PM

    very nice post sir....I believe it is even so more important for the todays youth to understand these as we get flown away in today fast life and the rat race....and then form our over skewed definition of life...

    InkMyTravel

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 24, 2013 at 7:13 AM

      There's so much lack of self-understanding today, Vishal, which leads to so many problems.

      It is a skewed definition of life, as you say...

      Delete
  3. KISLAYA GOPALApril 24, 2013 at 12:45 AM

    This is so true, if we rule ourselves everyone can enjoy freedom in real sense. Freedom for someone should not become slavery or drudgery or opression for someone else!
    A very good and meaningful post.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 24, 2013 at 7:14 AM

      Everyone can live happily on this planet if everyone thinks a little differently... Thanks.

      Delete
  4. mandakolathurApril 24, 2013 at 5:58 AM

    EXCELLENT!

    RE

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousApril 24, 2013 at 10:36 AM

    Sir, you have definitely defined freedom to its best .. and that is knowledge ... the fact that many of our lives are restricted from this beautiful freedom .. understanding the knowledge of freedom is in itself freedom ! a must read for all the youth !

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 24, 2013 at 11:33 AM

      I'm indebted to Will Durant and his essay on Spinoza for most of the views expressed here. Thanks for your appreciation.

      Delete
  6. RatApril 24, 2013 at 3:00 PM

    very good read

    ReplyDelete
  7. MaliniApril 25, 2013 at 6:48 AM

    As an aspiring entrepreneur, I can relate to each and every word of this post. In fact, it reflects the deepest thought in my mind right now. Thanks for writing this at this point in time!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 26, 2013 at 10:30 AM

      I'm immensely happy to hear your words, Malini. It's good to know that my writing makes sense to people.

      Delete
  8. Anupam KarnApril 25, 2013 at 12:01 PM

    Freedom - So truely defined! Liked the words of Durant:)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 26, 2013 at 10:31 AM

      Durant can teach us all much more than all the contemporary psychological writers who give easy solutions to everything...

      Delete
  9. AnonymousApril 28, 2013 at 10:24 AM

    Thought Provoking. Simply Great!!!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...
39 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
16 comments
Read more

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...
30 comments
Read more

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...
47 comments
Read more

Empuraan – Review

Revenge is an ancient theme in human narratives. Give a moral rationale for the revenge and make the antagonist look monstrously evil, then you have the material for a good work of art. Add to that some spices from contemporary politics and the recipe is quite right for a hit movie. This is what you get in the Malayalam movie, Empuraan , which is running full houses now despite the trenchant opposition to it from the emergent Hindutva forces in the state. First of all, I fail to understand why so much brouhaha was hollered by the Hindutvans [let me coin that word for sheer convenience] who managed to get some 3 minutes censored from the 3-hour movie. The movie doesn’t make any explicit mention of any of the existing Hindutva political parties or other organisations. On the other hand, Allahu Akbar is shouted menacingly by Islamic terrorists, albeit towards the end. True, the movie begins with an implicit reference to what happened in Gujarat in 2002 after the Godhra train burnin...
9 comments
Read more