Pho Freedom!

            My wife and I are currently self-employed, which gives us a lot of opportunities that not many people have. For one thing, we have almost complete control over our work schedules – although, in reality this means we work seven days a week. So, when my maternal grandfather gave up his licence and he and my grandmother still needed transportation to appointments, they gave me their car on the condition that I chauffeur them when needed. This was an excellent deal for me, because I actually had the free time for this. I was already giving my brother rides to work for the winter (so he wouldn't have to ride his motorcycle or get a car) and taking my paternal grandfather to the occasional appointment. Which is where this week’s story starts.

            I received a call from my paternal grandfather telling me that one of my cousins was much further south than he usually was, so would it be possible for me to drive him out to meet him and have lunch? Well, who am I to say no to a free lunch? Especially once it was suggested that we go to Colleen’s favourite restraunt. So it was that we went out to have pho.

            As this cousin lives considerably further north than me, I haven’t spent much time with him. I was astonished to find how much we had in common on our views of the world! I've always considered myself a bit of a philosopher, but my cousin had studied philosophy and my grandfather had studied some philosophy when he was becoming a minister. The resulting conversation at our table very likely melted the brains of any eavesdroppers.

            One of the most interesting things that came up was freedom. Now, freedom is a word we hear and use a lot, but it isn’t something we think about the meaning of. We just know we want it. The problem is that with freedom comes responsibility, which in its own is almost the same as not having freedom.

            For a person to be truly free, they need to be able to say and do whatever they want. The problem is that they are then able to harm others because to disallow them from harming others would be to eliminate their freedom. We see this problem across the internet all the time – people insulting others and telling people that try to stop them that they are free people, free to do what they want. This is true freedom, but it is only possible for one person to have, because for them to remain free, they must violate the freedoms of other – the freedom to be safe from the harms of others.

            The freedom that actually exists in this world has strings attached, because we (at least, most of us) believe that everyone should be free. So, as a free person, I now have the responsibility to temper my responses to other people, to restrain myself from saying things that would harm others. Why? Because to maintain my freedom, I must support the freedom of others.

            A perfect example is what I mentioned earlier about being self-employed. I'm free to make my own schedule and, as a result, I end up working seven days a week. If I didn't  I wouldn't be able to make enough money to remain self-employed to keep that freedom.

            Thus, freedom is something of a paradox. If you have it, it is something that you can’t abuse or you’ll lose it. I’d almost go as far as saying that freedom isn't actually something we want; it’s only something we think we want. My question then becomes: what do we want?

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.