Escape is not freedom. Freedom is different. Escape, more often than not, feels like some sort of betrayal, something like a criminal act with some degree of satisfaction and happiness. And escape also feels like it has a time limit attached to it: that escape is not forever. Maybe this is just a false impression, maybe the word has been made to feel like this.
But then we have this better word: freedom. Freedom is an optimistic word. I have learnt that even two synonymous words have some difference between them, most of the times, and they might vary in any respect: in degree, in feel, in context etc.
For a spent student, a day’s off from school is escape. But a permanent removal from that school is his real freedom: how long he enjoys that freedom is a different question. For a human being, most form of entertainments act like windows to escape, be it music, dance, painting, or simply playing computer games. The sense of freedom we get from them is usually short-lived and we return to the same tiring field of “unfreedom” after the inebriety wears off.
So we land at this simple distinction between the two: if it is ephemeral and time-bound, it is an escape, and it is permanent, it might be freedom.
What things, then, can count as freedom? Going to an amusement park? Living in the countryside? A chat with close friends on a deep night beside cracking fire? Or writing heart out in a diary? What is real freedom?
That question comes as tricky because most of the things you think about initially easily fall in the category of “escapes”. Escapes are necessary, they are okay, but they are not enough. We need freedom. We want something that is permanent.
This raises another philosophical question: if we, as humans, are not permanent, how can we aspire for something that is of some permanence? This must mean one of the two things: either there is no “freedom” in this world at all, or we happen to be permanent somehow. The latter appears more relevant when you are ready to consider the possibility of a life after life, a living universe, and the immortality of a spirit.
What is freedom, then? I think I don’t know. The answer is something to be figured out by ourselves, and the answer might be unique for everyone. Some religious people will consider the idea of God as liberating and hence freeing, in the form of salvation, and others, who are spiritual without openly accepting the idea of a God, will talk of being one with the soul of universe as being free. The atheists will perhaps advocate for the former argument: that there is no absolute freedom, and everything is some degree of escape.
Surprisingly, all of them might not realize, perhaps, that in some form they are already free: otherwise how would have the world allowed three different and contradictory belief systems to exist alongside? What is freedom, I ask again, because I do not understand!
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