WHAM! You just killed someone and blood trickles down on your face. You got extremely scared, thinking that the police and everybody are coming at your direction. The police are raising their guns at you and the people are murmuring at you and staring down at you. BUT! No one came… Shock surges through you as you laugh out loud. You feel freedom bursting through your heart and the happiness of killing that person for whatever your reasons you have.
Believe it or not, that whole imagination scene is WRONG! We are not as free as what the above situation sounds even though it’s a crazy situation. All of us share restrictions that don’t allow us to do what we want such as flying. This connects with our free will in what we want to do. By free will, we have our own thoughts; our own opinions meaning these opinions can make someone happy or hurt them. Like the people who are watching you, staring down at you after you killed someone. They think it is immoral of what you did and that you are not apart of us, the side that is the “good side”.
This subjectivity that the mankind has influence each others causes each other for most of the time to rethink twice. We follow our own opinions, we follow our own ideas but are we actually doing that? Banach said that we must take “obligations we have to other people” because we are taking on “the responsibility of choosing for all men”. We have to think about the “freedom for all men”. We are not alone in this even if we can not figure out each others thoughts completely but because we are living with each other, we need to prioritize others thoughts before our own.
Essence precedes “bad faith”. I think this “bad faith” that we created of these negativity from our emotions and thoughts get piled up, would make us weaken. With this pessimistic energy around us, we start to “deceive ourselves and act as if we weren’t free” and we are determine by “the expectations of other people”. Expectation is a large responsibility and whether we want it or not, it is always there. We have the choice of completing but sometimes by not completing a task, it makes ourselves feel less accomplished and make our negativity bar go up. I believe we make ourselves think that way as well as others influences that create a huge hold up in our lives.
On the other hand, I believe that you should just believe in yourself, as other people say it as well. “I am free to do whatever I choose” as Banach said. We can wheel ourselves in and make our own material even if the “raw materials” are already “determined”. We can control our own self and make that force go away. We are more than what we think and what others tell us. However, I truly believe that you have to believe what you think you want to believe before having others to influence you on your believe. Your essence comes before others but your actions and decisions can come after others influences or expectations on you.
Banach says we can control what we can view on the objects but there are also forces that make us against what we can do. So does that mean we have control such as when we want to kill someone but also that there are some forces/reasons are pushing them against their will, to make them commit a crime? Most of the crime, I believe there are reasons behind it but it might not that we can control or know what's the reason. Our desires, our troubles, our passion to do something push us to the edge of the cliff but are we able to control those feelings when it is very strong? I think yes, but also maybe, because even if we keep up a front, the feelings inside us bubble up, wanting to let it go. Like an explosion that we cannot keep it in for long or else we'll break.
Now, imagine yourself being in a crowded area. I mean extremely crowded, with so many people. However, they are in their own world, in their own mind. You might think that at least some people are talking about with each other but in this crowded area, they are with themselves. You are standing in this crowd where none of them notice you and the people would walk around you to walk to where they are heading. You notice them but they don’t notice you. What emotions would you feel? You would feel alone, confuse because you have no one to interact with. You have nothing that can entertain you and you look around, seeing the people walking by themselves. What can you do to get their attention?
These imaginations that I am telling you imagine in your mind, are you freely doing this? Are you imagining them to understand what I am trying to say? It is the same for me; I am creating these imaginations for the readers to create an understanding of what I want to shout out. I am writing this blog post, for someone to read it and try to understand what I am trying to say.
Now, getting back, this feeling of loneliness and the confusion makes you lose your control of thoughts. Your essence, your thinking would change because your view is different. By being in a crowd, you are traveling through a maze where you need to find the right way to leave this confusion. Don’t you feel that way when once you get to an open area, your heart feels more relax than being a constricted area? I feel that a lot of the times because you want to get to where you are but you can’t. There are so many people crowding around you, invading your space. I feel, as my heart would go mad, having my space of freedom to move around getting restricted. We want to be alone a lot of the times but then your feelings would change and you would feel lonely. Our feelings go back and forth just like our happiness and freedom. This confusion, this essence of ours that makes the confusion is so confusing that we might not even get what we want to know.
We ask each other about a lot of things. We share this knowledge and experiences of ours and teach the others about it. We share our secrets with others and hope that they would understand. Then there is the problem where our communication wouldn’t connect and problems start. However, because of the problems I believe we develop this massive knowledge for the mankind to receive other learning and experiences. I believe that we have our own experiences and answers but we can have similarities with other people that allowed us to converse and feel that we are not alone. Unlike what Banach said that we are “unable to feel anything but our own feelings and experiences”, I think we have these feelings and experiences because it is passed down through the evolution of mankind.
I believe that happiness is a silent word and freedom is an undefined idea. We feel happiness because we feel happiness. Just that simple. That’s why, why think about something that might ruin our mood of happiness? And then there's freedom; how much quantity of freedom do we think we have that makes our answers different from each other? We can have freedom that is as small as having a lollipop to as big as criminal justice, the laws and wars.
Unlike what I have said, I agree with Banach that a lot of the times we can’t feel what others are feeling. What we feel is ours alone because every feeling that came from the situation/scenario that we are in always has something different in it. But as I said, feelings can be similar and doesn’t have to be the same.
I think a lot of the times, what Banach states at the end of the third lecture that "real happiness...cannot be taken away by the external forces beyond their control." Such as the small things like eating the food we like, that we feel satisfied, that we have to say "how delicious" that we think this is happiness. I believe that there is real happiness when one feels it and I don't expect that we need to explain to anyone when we feel that real happiness. It is because if we start explaining it, they would ask questions, then we would have to explain more. The more I think about how to answer their questions, the more I thought that that can ruin the real happiness that I just feel because I want to continue feeling this "real happiness”.
However, I think happiness can also be shared such as winning a prize as a group. The whole group would be shouting for joy. As well as having given a birth; the grandparents would be excited getting a grandchild and the parents would be so glad of having a baby in their life. I would be so happy once an exciting anime series came out and a manga that has beautiful drawings plus the whole book is anticipating. Then by sharing that happiness with another person, I am introducing them to a part of my world. In a lot of the anime series, the main hero/heroine would say, “I’m going to protect everyone”, “They are important to me”, “They make me happy and I would like to make them happy”. Happiness is silent word that can be shared just by using body movements and the will or something in our mind that makes the happiness happens.
For freedom, I believe there is and I believe there isn’t. As I stated before, freedom is an undefined idea and what each person thinks about freedom, the quantity of freedom, and the stories are different. Plus, there are a lot of types of freedom that we are thinking that differs from each other. I believe to gain freedom, such as overcoming a fear, we need to go through a force, whether it is tiny or huge that would come to bother us. It is telling us that if you want to get what you want, you must overcome moi. We all need to think of a way to cross out these obstacles, and then we would feel that we become stronger and our freedom would extend more.
As for the crime situation, I think we all have reasons behind our actions and even if we don’t, I believe that it is because we can’t understand them. It is wrong to kill someone but it depends on how that someone had treated the murderer. Even though we call them victims, are some of them victims, victims or are some of the murderers the one who are the victims? The murderers’ freedom is always less than the victims because they are the one that committed the “bad faith”. Then we must take “responsibility” of the actions we took and are blamed by the others who also made these bad faiths into reality.
Freedom, I believe, is something that cannot be just there for you easily but you have to earn it. Also for the others who are connected to you, part of what they earn, the freedom, will also go to you and part of yours will go to them. Such as, you are in this world because your parents “earned” you to come into this world. There! That is the start of your freedom, the starting line where you need to start running to go through this period of your life. You start school but it is because of your parents’ knowledge, they got you in, they “earned” the funds, and most importantly, they wish for you to get an education. So in the school you are attending, if you want, you would “earn” to get a good grade for your parents to see it, so they can be happy. If you have a path that you choose that you want to go in, you need to “earn” what you need to to get that onto that path and beyond. Freedom is not easy to collect but it is easy with your own determination and with the others around you. Therefore, I believe that freedom is happiness and happiness is freedom because we have to feel one of the other first to get the other to become complete.
Rather or not I am an existentialist or an individualist, I don't think that matters. "Existentialist" and "individualist" are titles that we categorize ourselves in. This whole manifesto that I am writing is a personal part of what I am thinking about the mankind. We might be alone but by bickering or sharing or spreading each others ideals, feeling our pressure and their pressure at the same atmosphere, all of our other things grow.
I believe that by not feeling lonely or secluding yourself but go the way you believe is right (whether you want to choose to have the expectations or not); you would be able to access to more freedom and happiness. Each person’s happiness and freedom are connected with other people. Once you find those people that are “destined” or “fated” to meet you, then they come to support you, and giving you the feelings that you need to fill the void in your heart, I believe you will feel better. Then there will be so many experiences you will get with the people you are connected by invisible strings.
So, do you feel alone now?
How about your freedom?
Your happiness? Ah, but don't answer me. Like I already said, happiness is a silent word.
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