di Alessandro Renna
Are you free?
POV: Our cultural heritage unconsciously imposes dogmas/rules on us over which, however, we have full power of choice.
Because we are born free and are free to choose what is best for us.
Right.
RI-POV: for example, we are free to choose who to love and how many people to love without any prejudice.
Or still we are free to demand a job that fully satisfies us, working as where and how much we want for the right compensation without being pointed at as deluded dreamers.
Right.
Then instead there is the reality where none of this is real.
Where a simple "my freedom ends where the other person's begins" rule is not enough.
I'm not sure where or when, partly because it's different for each of us, but at some point we convince ourselves that it's okay.
Indeed, the unwritten "rules" that direct our lives are unwritten very well. So much so that precisely in several steps of our journey we turn off the switch of "but will I be able to do as I fucking feel?" and lose much of what makes us be ourselves, unique and unrepeatable.
Examples to understand:
- But do you have auntie girlfriend?
- But when are you getting married annonna?
- What about the grandchildren?
- You can't keep dreaming, you have to get a real job.
- You have to go to college otherwise how can you get a job?
- But get a job together that at least you have peace of mind.
By dint of hearing and seeing happening these "obvious" steps that are the only acceptable ones to make you a person worthy of being able to walk on this green (for a little longer) earth, you become convinced that it is probably the right way. You become so convinced of it that you disavow everything you have believed up to that point, becoming the first, proponent of "but it's just the way it is."
But just for whom! Who the fuck decided that?
Also because if you think about it, if the mantra "Don't dream! Be realistic, what you want is impossible!" there would be a lot more astronauts or dancersə.
And speaking of astronauts, there is a line from the movie Interstellar that hits me like a punch in the face every time I watch it:
"We used to look up to the sky in wonder, feeling part of the firmament; now, however, we lower our gaze, worrying that we are part of the sea of mud."
Cooper - Interstellar
Try visualizing it from a personal perspective, with "once" relating to your past and "now" relating to your present with perspective on the future.
Voila.
Our big problem as a civilization and as a society is that we no longer know how to listen to ourselves. We are not taught, we are not given any weight at all to taking care of ourselves, to really understanding who we are and what we want, to developing our talents, our aspirations.
It is more important to know how to do exponential fractions and logarithms. Which I don't know about you but I never had any use for them.
It is much more important to show that you know, to show that you are, than to know, to really be.
But the only possible way to become the best version of yourself is to listen to yourself, to learn to feel deeply, unfiltered, you alone in the midst of the universe. You have as much to learn from yourself as you do from the world around you, that same world full of noise, which wants you married to a person of the opposite sex at a decent age, mind you, with a good office job from 9 to 6 p.m. and then the children, the house of property et voila that les jeux sont fait, rien ne va plus.
Fortunately in my heart I really think that you can be, you can become what you really feel deep inside. It is difficult, tremendously difficult. The level of difficulty of course is mostly done by the social context in which you are born (with a big parenthesis on geography) which unfortunately, although it sounds absurd in my head, is still a matter of ass.
But basic want is power dear ones, and in 2022 on the threshold of 2023 I deeply believe that anything is possible.
Yeah, I haven't stopped dreaming yet, and slowly it seems to be working.
Indially, I think a good resolution for the coming year is really one of the most basic: to commit to becoming free, free indeed.
And now I ask the question again: Are you free?
