Voices 3: voices of freedom

Linda is starting a series of weekly workshops on Philosophical Practice, or Philo-Sophia.

“Good morning,” she greets the small group. “The topic that I chose for our first meeting today is freedom. Now, how do we start? One possibility is to start with a discussion. But I don't trust abstract thoughts that are disconnected from concrete experience. So instead, let's look at real events that happened to us. Please take a few moments and think about a situation that you experienced recently, where you felt a sense of freedom, or a sense of lack of freedom.”

John raises his hand immediately. “I've got something. Sometimes I find it hard to control my feelings and moods, especially my anxiety and anger. I wish I could be more free from these emotions.”

“People are less free than they think,” says Annette. “Our emotions control us.”

“I disagree,” Phillip objects. “We ARE our emotions!”

“Just a minute,” Linda says. “You are now talking on a very abstract level. I asked you to choose a specific, concrete event that you experienced.”

“I thought we were trying to do philosophy,” Angela says.

“Philo-sophia, not academic philosophy. In Philo-sophia we want to hear life, not just abstract theories. We listen to the living moment, to particular experiences, to specific events.”

“But isn't philosophy about ideas?”

“You would be surprised how many philosophical ideas you can find in a simple everyday moment.”

Annette looks at her questioningly, and Linda explains. “In everyday life we constantly interpret our world. We give meaning to things that happen to us. We do this not just through our conscious thinking, but mainly through our feelings, through our choices and behavior, through our hopes and fears, in short - through our everyday attitudes. For example, when you feel guilty because you broke a promise, your bad feeling is saying: ‘Breaking a promise is morally wrong'. And when you obsessively want to know everything your husband is feeling and thinking, your obsession may be a statement: ‘Love means being transparent to each other'. So you see, each one of us has ‘theories' about life, although we are usually not aware of them. We LIVE these ‘theories', we don't THINK ABOUT them.”

“You are telling us,” Michael comments, “that we are all philosophers.”

“Exactly. We all have ‘theories' about basic life-issues. The problem is that these ‘theories' are usually automatic, narrow and rigid. They act like patterns of behavior, patterns of emotions, patterns of thought.”

“Alright,” Ruth says. “I think I understand what you want us to do. I have an experience I'd like to share with you.”

She tells the group how last month she had volunteered to play with sick children in a nearby hospital. Soon, however, she started feeling suffocated. The obligation was a burden. Her afternoons were no longer free, and she was unable to go out with friends, or take a walk by the sea, or simply sit in a cafe and sip coffee. “I don't go out very much, but I like to feel that I have the freedom to do it.”

For several weeks she felt like a prisoner, until she decided to resign. “When I stepped out of the building I felt free as a bird. I stretched my body and felt my freedom. It was absolutely exhilarating: Wow, now I can do whatever I want!”

“And what did you do with your new freedom?” Phillip asks her.

“What did I do? Nothing in particular. I simply enjoyed it. I enjoyed the fact that I had no obligations.”

“Very interesting,” Linda says. “The freedom that you enjoyed was a very specific kind of freedom: It was freedom-from: absence of constraint.”