Sight of Freedom

Thoughts behind an artwork born from the complexities of leading a life.

Freedom should invariably start with the freedom to make your own choices. This can range from choosing which foot goes outside your blanket at night to more complex varieties where it decides the quality of one’s life.

Absolute freedom brings us to a crossroads with positive and negative liberties. The latter being a liberty without any obstacles. These are core points for discussion in freedom since the time of Plato. Nevertheless, basic human rights and the freedom to access them are important whatever lens you choose to look through.

As time passes what freedom means will continue to evolve and transcend; 50 years from now what we deem as freedom today will not be looked at the same way. The fact that we chose freedom to lose brain cells trying to long and short a coin called ‘harrypottersonicobamainu’ will be thoroughly studied by semi-humanoid robots from their pods on Mars. But in all sense, that’s a very high-hanging fruit of freedom too.

'For the Record', from the collection L Papers

Another question looming around in my head was what freedom meant to our fellow beings. What does freedom mean in the context of the entire nature that we are part of? Does a frog or a lion or an antelope have the same obsession over the sanctity of life and its preservation? Does an inland Taipan have the same drive towards the reduction of suffering for all creatures that it shares this planet with?

Our consciousness is probably the key to answering this. The fact that the universe exists through us and our perception and that we feel a need to morally sustain life is in itself a reason to be obsessed with the well-being of fellow creatures.

Yet, they are witnesses to our sights fostered by our struggles in life — what do they feel about it? What does your furry friend feel when you choose to spend a night consuming reality TV shows when you could be writing a sonnet or working out? Probably nothing, all things considered they probably are enjoying it as much as you are and can’t wait to binge another season of Jersey Shore.

Next in my pool of questions was “Where do I go with the freedom I’ve attained, and where do I take those with me?”

Being from a developing country, and part of a historically overlooked and severely discriminated sect of people, that had to fight even into the 20th century for basal needs such as the right to be clothed, I had to probe into the nature of freedom. What it means to me, and how much I take it for granted today.

No dose of mescalin will open the doors of perception to our fellow being’s perspective of life completely. But a part of me believes that with enough effort and experience, one can peek over the borderlines and understand, what the feelings are even for a fair few moments.

And that we should, across nation borders, unspoken borders of relationships amongst our kind, borders that separate us from other beings on this planet, and most importantly across those that we create within our own minds.