The real Human Freedom - Choice

Does anyone ever come from an healthy background? Psychologically I mean...

Well, usually when parents show Love, not only towards their kids, but specially, crucially, between themselves, there's a chance for openness and care that allows anyone in the family to talk about their problems, their JOYS and that's healthy...

You don't think you come from an healthy background? Well, think again, or deeper.

Your background, despite of what were the environmental conditions, is actually your inner self. Something that came along with you before you were even born. You're spirit, your soul.

Nowadays most of us live with a inner fear for our own Life, our own mental health, our capacity of growing and becoming responsible adults, and when there's kids and other family members involved, the paranoia becomes even greater. And it's that same fear that imprisons us into a co-dependent life with the outside conditions. You can't control what your boss is thinking, or the financial markets tendencies, or what the psychological mood of the other drivers is. The only thing that is your own responsibility is yourself, your inner self, that "voice" that you were born with and that walks by your side your entire Life.

An example of this, one that you can't argue about it, is what Viktor Emil Frankl experienced in 1945, and so well described in his writings in "Man's Search for Meaning - Experiences in a Concentration Camp", Pocket Books, ISBN 978-0-671-02337-9 pp. 56–57:

"We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road leading from the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbour's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his mouth behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to us.

That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which Man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of Man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved."

Viktor then understands that "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. (...)  Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way (...)"

This is one powerful thought, and we should let it resonate into our actions, so that our Life can be the truest expression of our potentialities.

So many times we drag ourselves through an infinite role of excuses. We rationalize that if only our job, our society, our wife/spouse, or parents, our body, if only the weather was sunnier, or actually rainier, then we could do/be better.

It requires a strong dosage of humbleness to become aware of our own responsibility towards life. And it requires a great deal of determination and creativity to overcome the challenges that come with that responsibility.

Now you could charge me with that crucial question: and when we get sick, or someone with no connection to us, harms us? I will have to ask you, how do you want to feel about that? You're entitled and you should feel angry! So many times Life is unfair. Why should children suffer so much pain, being neglected, abused, sick, forced to hold weapons. Where is the so called self-responsibility in that??? It's not. The outside factors such as pollution, toxic chemicals and toxic childhoods indeed govern our biological rhythms, BUT the spirit of those children, the spirit of that person that feels their Life threaten, lies in them only. The only thing one can hold onto is their own self-love, their own self-joy. Sometimes there are other souls that reach their hands for us to hold, and that might be the only thing we have in that moment, appreciate it. To be given Love, to feel the care of someone else’s spirit over our Heart, it’s such a wonderful reality. Dive into that thought. Release yourself from old beliefs and become the soul creative force in your own Life. Believe that your true self contains every possibility.

"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself."
—
George Bernard Shaw

So many psychologist have mention that important step in one's happiness. Maslow called "self-actualisation", C. Rogers named "growth potential", Mahatma Gandhi or Mandela in their lives had to fought against harm, but they didn’t choose hate or violence. They were true towards their own self nature and they knew, at the core, that “you must be the change you want to see in the World.” So if you want to see Love, choose Love.

It’s the difference between being (re)active or (pro)active. The first makes you act without thought, lets you repeat the same mistakes, doesn’t allow real progress, and the second, to proactively live our Life, means that we choose our direction, our growth, independently of exterior conditions. As the word responsibility comes from the idea of being able to respond. Become that person that has the ability to respond thoughtfully to Life, don’t just let it be, passively, quitting on the world, or worst, of yourself.