What is a perfectly free person?
>> Saturday, June 19, 2010
While sitting in the balcony in a serious and contemplating mood I happened to behold two contrasting events that stole my attention away into an abyss where there were many questions that rattled my mind. I saw a person, weak, shabbily dressed and quite old carrying a heap of wooden scraps on his shoulders. Yes, he was a laborer who was supposed to be paid in return of his work. I failed to conclude whether he was the slave of his need or was the slave of the master or whom he did the work. At the same time, through a opening in the window, I saw a person lost in deep slumber lying comfortably in his room. Now, he was also a slave who enjoyed his slavery…What is a perfectly free person? Evidently a person who can do whatever he likes, doesn’t do what he don’t like. However, this is quite impossible thing. No one can be so free. No one has ever led his life in such a freedom as some necessities enslave him. A person is always a slave of his necessities for he cannot get rid of himself and is ought to attend to his own demands. Whether we are a monarch or a slave we are the slave of our needs which we cannot shirk off. For half of the day we are busy attending to our whim which gets defined as our comfort… yes, we are the slaves of the comfort that seems too lucrative.
Some necessities have to be fulfilled and they give rise to yet other possibilities. As we have to eat as it lets us survive but before eating we must have food, we need to sleep but before really sleeping we need bed and a room, we need to walk on road and to walk we need clothes to cover our nakedness. Needs always give birth to an action that’s also necessary, thus, we become prisoners to our needs. Now, when food can be earned to feed ourselves, it may also be stolen. When we can employ several laborers to get us clothes and lodging they can also protest being so. Thus, it’s all about keeping one’s hand above in the midst of the war called “I want to be served”. So, I would let you all pondering about this said agenda.
Slavery to nature is quite natural and is completely different from the slavery of a man to man- unnatural. Slavery to nature is always enjoyable and very captivating. While, slavery to a man is really suffocating act that squeezes life out of the slave, at the same time slavery to nature bears a mirth that a slave is not oblivious about.
We need to eat and drink to survive; we would eat and drink a lot if it’s affordable. See, we voluntarily accept this slavery. We need to sleep or we will go mad; we would love to be sleeping always. Aren’t we the slave of the nature who accepts all sort of slavery that nature imposes on us? Whereas, the slavery of a man to another man is quite painful, in fact, no person is that good to be another’s master.
I am leaving this issue of ‘slavery’ in your minds and to contemplate on it further… I have a question, what is better- to work for eight to nine hours a day and get retired at the age of 45 earning the pension, or to work for four hours a day and keep working till one gets perished?
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3 comments:
This post is very interesting and true. Nobody is ever REALLY free. We are all slaves to our needs, and there is not a person in the world without needs.
Anand, you have always had a gift to get your facts spot on.
Of course second one is better but nature again doesn't allow us to choose what we like.It always imposes upon us the way it want to mold us because nature knows our capability and incapability both.To make us more stronger it always compel us to do what we fear to do.
Great post, Anand. But are we not also slaves to our society and its norms? If we lived in a place where all yellow skinned people are shunned, then would we not also believe that yellow-skinned people should be shunned? Personally, my beliefs tell me that it is not so. We shun no one. Yet, I have been shunned by others in my society. Let's see whaere that idea may take us
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