Legal confinement

     It sounds so pretty in the mouth when it is said but we all know that it is a mere utopian dream. In reality, you can’t just walk away, fly away, or drive away from your current life. If you’re a parent, you have children to feed; if you’re married, you have a vow to fulfill; if you’re a student, you have your parents to please. Whatever your excuse is, you just can’t walk away because some of the decisions we made, do affect us for a life time. However, it is indeed possible to just walk out of your current life. But it takes an awful lot of gut and courage to do that and society will definitely block your way, making sure to crush that dream of yours into pieces. We live in a circle of functions that makes up a structure. And this structure is this thing we call as society. This is how it works; society notices its various tendencies, the ups and downs, and the effects of certain aspects that happen within its circle. Then it forms judgment, concludes which is good and bad, creates rules, and enforces them.  

As a result, we live in a tiny crammed box, in which everyone is brainwashed from the morals and virtues society forces us to adopt. Though the world is vast, we are not aware of the fact that we are imprison.  

You must conform. And if you don’t, you’re out. No more equal treatments for you.  

Society creates the idea of what is right and wrong, of good and bad, of what is normal and abnormal. The thing is, we are all different in many ways and what appears to be “good” to society,  can’t always be perceived the same way to the rest of the people. And by “the rest” I mean the minority, those few individuals, who society might perceive as “different” and therefore “bad”. Each of us is wired intricately by our Creator; we possess a variety of traits and personalities, our minds work at various level of pace, we have different ways of coping, and also different ways of communicating. So being different really is a stupid excuse to label someone negatively.

Go to college, get a degree, get a job, kiss your way up to the top of the corporate ladder, get married, have kids. People see those things as a must. Those are what expected from you. If you lack something from the above statement you’ll be viewed as a failure. There are many other stuffs society demands from us. And we keep on feeding it exactly what it wants by living the kind of life it sees as “proper”. Of course, it’s not a problem for those who are on the same page with society. This is for the people who feel like there is more to life than just living by the standard society sets. 

I remember sitting in a sociology class one morning and the professor threw out a rhetorical question, “are human beings really free?” Unfortunately, he did not answer his own question and proceeded to move on to the next section of the PowerPoint slide. Today, fortunately, a bit of light was shed. It’s from a song called Geboren um frei zu sein by the well-known german rapper, Sido. It’s not really an answer, but it’s a view from his very own perspective, which I think is quite interesting. The title itself is pretty self explanatory; it is translated as ‘born to be free’. 

Wir sind geboren um frei zu sein aber das geht nicht, sagen sie, und dann schließen sie meinen Käfig. Denn dieser Vogel darf nicht fliegen, weil er kein Adler ist. Auch machen was er will und denken was er will darf er nicht.

Roughly translated, the song goes on how, us, being unable to embrace freedom, although it is supposed to be our innate right from the day we were born. It continues with an analogy of a bird being locked up in a cage by society. This particular bird is not allowed to fly, since it is not an eagle, but just a regular one. Thus, it doesn’t contain the sublime power/beauty to be worth enough to fly for freedom.

                                Wenn du wie wir zwei deine Freiheit willst, dann sag es laut! Geh auf die Straße raus. Schreibs auf Plakate rauf. Lass deine Hoffnung nicht zusammen fallen wie ein Kartenhaus. Geh und sag es jedem, wir wollen Spaß am Leben. Wir wollen es jetzt; wir wollen nicht warten bis zum Garten Eden.  Die Welt ist unser, kommt, wir mischen sie auf, denn wir müssen hier raus!

                             This is the part where it gets ironic. It basically says that, if you want to have your own freedom, then say it out loud. Go out to the street, write it on posters, don’t let your hope falls apart like a house of cards. Go and tell everyone that we want to have fun in life. We want it now, we don’t want to have to wait until heaven arrives(until the end of the world). The world is ours and we have to get out of here.

What a fun thing to do, right? If only we can let loose like that without having to receive mean looks, or getting ourselves talked behind our backs. Sure, the song is written figuratively, but it is still a perfect description of how difficult it is for somebody to be himself in a world full of judgment and tacit rules. There are just places where you can do nothing but conform. Hell, in some places, being different can even sometimes get you killed.

                                The truth is, human beings aren’t free. We are bound, subconsciously, by the social forces society create for us. And it takes one hell of a person to have the gut and courage to release himself from such confinement.