Freedom

Published on TheTropicalViking.com in July 2014

The higher the barrier is to the open field the more we imagine we will appreciate it once we get to it.

I remember being a teenager with an undying lust to explore the world. My dad worked in the hotel business and the company he worked for had a hotel in the north of Sweden, in one of the largest ski resorts and every now and then he had to go up there to work. As I had developed a passion for snowboarding he combined these trips on the weekends so that I could come along and play in the mountains while he was going through excel sheets or conduct meetings or whatever it was he was doing. Since I didn’t know any of the locals or had the opportunity to bring any friends with me I rode by myself most of the time. I was the first one at the lift and the last one to come down, I often waited for the slopes to clear out at the end of the day to have the playing field all to myself during the last ride then I would hike a jump at the bottom of the hill until I had depleted all energy sources. With a body aching from lactic acids and misfortunate landings.

I explored the mountain and tried to make every ride different than the last one. The most enjoyable moments were when the landscape laid open and suggested ridiculous fast rides down steep sections with wide spraying turns that allowed me to imagine I was surfing. Something I had not had the opportunity to try yet but was incredibly appealing to me. These were times when I let everything go, my mind was right there and nothing mattered. I remember feeling very thankful to get this opportunity, not only to my parents for giving me the opportunity, but also to mother nature to being so extraordinary fantastic to provide such a glorious playground. 

Back in the hotel during dinner with my dad I tried to explain the feeling and the achievements I had been attempting in the jumps throughout the day. I am not sure the message came across clear enough through a mouth full of french fries but I am sure he got the point. I was happy. 

For a long time I connected riding the mountains with freedom, a place and situation where I did not have any obligations, no homework, no worries. A brief moment where I had no mind, no thought. It was amazingly addictive and as any addiction, coming down can be a painful experience. I saw there were going to be things in my life that might obstruct me from having this feeling as often as I the desired. Things like, school, geography, money and duties were going to stand in the way and decide over when and where these moments of liberation were going to take place. I dreamed of hitch hiking to the mountains in the US and even measured up my board bag in order to see if it might be possible to sleep in it in case I couldn’t find accommodation. I was 15 and my parents were not stoked on the idea. Admittedly I was dreaming and bumming around Alaska didn’t happen but I had a desire and when you desire you only see the possibilities and find solutions to all situations. 

As children we don’t think about purpose, we make, we do, we play and we have the ability to block out any restriction until it is clearly pointed out to us. At which point we are most likely to try to push that limit to see what the consequences would be, I guess that could be considered giving an action a purpose; exploration and learning. The world as a child is infinite and without restrictions we don’t even reflect on the concept of freedom as it doesn’t exist until we can grasp the meaning of limitation. They go together and the one can not go without the other just as day can not be without night. It is not until we are corralled and ordered by social norms to take the road of obstacles and to conquer them that we start to feel restricted. 

Unfortunately when we grow up more and more obstacles are pointed out to us and often in a way that become more aware of them and not on the road between them. What we fail to see is that it is us who place the obstacles there ourselves and we spend tremendous force and energy to overcome them. To our comfort we give the struggles meaning and pacify our, now confused, inner child that we will be rewarded in the future. That it will all make sense at the end of the road and we will feel very good about it and that we will be more happy later if we put up with some tedious hardship now, in the present. Societal values and made-up responsibilities force our behaviour to give everything we do a purpose, it has to be useful and if do it right we can achieve a certain status among our peers. It has become accepted in our modern society to keep this pattern going by forcing expectations on others almost as a way of punishment for the expectations that we believe are put on us. I guess you could say that this is a fair trade off to that extent. 

The higher the barrier is to the open field the more we imagine we will appreciate it once we get to it. Almost as if the field would be too obvious to be fully appreciated unless the barrier was there to keep us from reaching it. With our scheduled “ought to’s” and “should do’s” we repress our passions. The achievement of getting something done becomes more important than the enjoyment of doing it as if it is not reward enough to be able to do whatever it is that we occupy our time with. We successfully separate play from work and it all becomes very serious. This way we are allowed to praise the time we don’t have work, when we can have vacation, from latin vacatio; freedom, or in our modern case vacatio pro tempore, freedom for the time being. Too often this free time is spent doing nothing as we don’t know what to do with the freedom except from not doing what we usually do. I believe a lot of us get confused when asked what we want, what we desire, because we have stopped considering our passions to even be an option that we are allowed to choose. We have forgotten what the field looks like, if it was a steep hill covered in a canvas of snow or a cotton canvas waiting to be filled with colours and brush strokes, instead all we see is the fence that keeps us from dedicating our time to enjoy it.

Recently this video was forwarded to me and as I watched it the words of Alan Watts resonated deeply. It reminded me of that the road is out there and that there is still a whole lot of the world to be explored. More so I realised how much fun I am having living in it. It gives me comfort that the only meaning that life can possibly have is what I give it and that playing is absolutely an option. 

Play nice.