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freedom is conditioned not only by your maturity but also by the values that society, culture and religion have handed on to you...
So you want to be free. Well, its your right since you live in a free country; at least thats what youve been brought to believe. However, as you grew up you gradually came to realize that your personal freedom was somewhat limited by having to follow your parents directives, your teachers instructions, your peer groups unwritten rules, your friends expectations, your cultures values, your religions commandments and your own inner inescapable urges and needs. Later on you realized that true freedom always implies the right to choose. Eventually you may have believed that the privilege of choosing between or among the possible options that freedom offers should be made by those person(s) who would be affected by the option chosen. Also, you might have realized that personal freedom can only survive when persons respect truth and goodness. If truth or the good is compromised, personal freedom and free choice will in part or totally disappear and end up in the hands of those persons in society or the world who have the greatest power and influence in the political, economic, scientific, academic and religious spheres. These individuals are referred to at times as the barons of society, the persons in control. In your own immediate world of home, school and workplace the barons are those persons whose directives and points-of-view directly or indirectly so condition your exercise of freedom that you end up with fewer choices and less opportunities to make your own decisions. You have to take all this into consideration as you opt for one of the choices that freedom offers you. After having freely chosen one of your options other persons may see you as a rebel, a malcontent, a social or religious misfit, as someone who doesnt get it. As a result you might become depressed or melancholic or you could end up in the mainstream of society, making your own all that others expect of you while trying to satisfy your own needs and desires. Unfortunately and as history has shown, you will never be able to balance others expectations and your own needs. (Can your efforts to do so contribute to the development of a split or dual personality?) Giving time to time will help you realize with greater clarity that freedom is not all that its made out to be. Since us humans are social beings, whenever you ignore or perhaps reject society, culture or religion with their institutions and values (as they were or are presented to you), you may find yourself walking down a lonely path all alone. Because you live in and are part of a social structure (your family, your church, mosque or temple, your school, your gang, your club, etc.), you are enclosed in that structure and consequently are limited as regards the exercise of your freedom. The misuse or unacceptable use of your freedom may result in your being excluded from what your social structure offers. As a result you may imagine and feel that you are enclosed in a bubble in the far outer reaches of inner space. Confused? It is the awful feeling of isolation, of loneliness. It is the realization that being free means very little when you are all alone! What it comes down to is that Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and just about every other psychologist were right when they pointed out that were not as free as we once thought. However, if you take into account that freedom implies the power to choose and choosing implies that there are alternatives from which to choose, you are a lot freer than you might be thinking: you can choose to obey or not obey, to do or not do, to follow or not follow, to value or not value, to sin or not sin. It was not freedom but the choosing between options that troubled Shakespeares Hamlet: to be or not to be, that is the question. It takes maturity and prudence to choose the best possible option. In choosing you must accept the consequences occasioned by your choices. Oftentimes you may discover that once you have freely made an initial choice you are confronted with a series of further choices that you must make. Thats par for the course and you must take all that into consideration as you exercise your freedom to choose. As you become more perceptive with the passing of time and grow in true wisdom (as opposed to knowledge) your awareness of what your free choices imply will increase. For example, a child might love apple pie more than anything else in the world and choose to consume half of a whole pie before his mother returns to the kitchen. Probably what could result from eating so much pie at one time was not foreseen by the child. A more mature person would be able to foresee the probable consequences of eating so much pie at one sitting and would wisely refrain from doing so. Because you are a social being and as such are connected to other social beings you should take other persons into consideration when deciding which is your best possible option. How are your choices going to affect them? Will you limit your considerations to your own individual needs, pleasure or profit? Consider, for example, the case of a young woman who has taken great care of her physical appearance and who is considered quite attractive. She may marry a man who gives significant importance to how she looks and who takes great pride in having a trophy wife. If some few years after marriage that young woman lets her appearance go to pot, she probably will lose part of the attraction that drew her husband to her. Our free choices affect others! If in college or at the university you decide not to give much serious time to study, you may never graduate. Since you do not graduate, you cannot find a better paying job or one that gives you and your family more security. Our free choices affect others! A future lawyer or doctor might decide that a certain course in law or medicine is both boring and of little future use and so each of them decide to skip various

lectures in their respective discipline. As a result a patient who could have been helped may end up dead and a client who is innocent may end up in jail. Our free choices affect others! The use of your personal freedom is conditioned not only by your maturity but also by the values that society, culture and religion have handed on to you. Societal and cultural values are transmitted to you by your family, your teachers, the persons with whom you have had contact in life and also through the printed word and social media. Religions transmit their respective religious and spiritual values through rites, rituals, sacred scriptures, tradition and by the faith, practices and teachings of exemplary members within their respective faith communities. While freedom opens the door to a variety of choices, you may at times be egoistically driven to choose a specific option by Greed, Lust or Insecurity. All three look to take away the inner peace you enjoy in not being pressured to consider only one option to the exclusion of all others. They are like termites that slowly eat up your personal freedom. What Greed, Lust or Insecurity takes away from you, you may never fully recover and it will become a permanent loss. Like termites these three will eat up your personal freedom. Greed can be found wherever and whenever persons unceasingly look to climb a ladder leading to more power, fame, wealth or whatever. If you are greedy, your use of freedom will mean that you will immediately reject all options that dont provide you with a ladder. Lust lives in the world of pleasure. If you are lustful, you will push to one side truth and goodness to favor pleasure. Consequently, the foundation stones of freedom have been removed and you are the poorer for it. You have been enslaved. Insecurity creates grave doubts about the reliability of the insights that reason transmits to your free will. If you are insecure, you live a life of maybe, perhap, let me think about it, and for some inner peace you will seek others to make decisions for you.

Is freedom so very important? Yes. Consider what the major religions say about it. They all give great importance to freedom even though their understanding of freedom may differ. Christianity sees freedom as one of the greatest gifts, perhaps the greatest, that God has given to humans. The Catholic Church believes that Gods judgment of a person hinges on that persons use of his freedom and the choices that he freely makes. Hinduism sees freedom as the necessary tool for performing the meritorious deeds which will establish and nurture a persons good relationship with the various Hindu Gods. Islams holy book, the Quran, makes repeated references to the need of persons having freedom so that they can ponder, identify and follow their personal understanding of faith down whatever road it might lead them. Buddhisms core teaching is that freedom from attachment is the cure for suffering; consequently, persons must be free so as to free themselves from suffering. Judaisms rich tradition regarding freedom relates it to justice and to the innate dignity of all persons. Freedom, justice and human dignity appear in Judaism as the three sides of the same triangle. Check out College Notes from Noble Wolf at: www.global-catholic.org

Freedom

College Notes from Noble Wolf

Fr. Adolph Menendez, s.x. & Emily Stout, Poet Global Youth Mission Services 101 Summer Street, P.O. Box 5857 Holliston, MA 01746 noblewolf@xaviermissionaries.org