A 19 Year Old’s (Somewhat First World) Perception of Freedom

In the previous month, I was interviewed by a talented young lady, Sara Hartinger, about what it means to be free. It didn’t take me long to answer at all – in fact, I knew what I was going to say the moment the rising inflection rolled off her tongue.

Freedom can be aptly described, to quote, as a feeling of being “eternal”, as captivatingly described in The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. It’s that feeling when the only thing that goes through you is air, and it fills your lungs with a gaping emptiness so vast that you feel your existence scattered through the air around you. That amalgam of adrenaline, cool, strong winds and pure exposure to a world that has no obligation to accept you: bareness. A feeling often taken as ‘youth’ – but, oh, how tragic that would be! I feel as if I should end my life now if I can never feel that way, again.

Fitting yourself comfortably into the gaps between stars, having an unabashed smile and driving down a long road while a song that Takes Your Breath Away (not necessarily Berlin) plays in the car and the love of your life is at the wheel is freedom. Freedom is an empty joy – it is not an emotion itself, as happy or sad is, but it is distinct moments where you go beyond feeling any banal emotions and you simply exist with a belly full of life and the caving in chest heaving nothingness of the world sucking you into a beautiful, beautiful spell.

I’m not saying that Apartheid ended so I could go look at stars and listen to old love songs. I’m saying that freedom gives me the ability to exist in a space so open and comfortable that I can let myself exist beyond the boundaries of my own self and become something more.

Something so, so much more.

Even if just for a moment.

That is freedom, to me. 

Waiting, the Rational Investor & Uncertainty

They say “Good things come to those who wait”. Whoever ‘they’ are, surely, should be knowledgeable since ‘their’ knowledge has been promulgated throughout society and the minds of little children. What are some of the things you’ve waited for in your lifetime – and I’m literally referring only to things you had to just wait for, without much action on your part? Things beyond your control – perhaps waiting for your mother to finish cooking dinner? Waiting for the train to come?

What made you so sure dinner would ever be done? How did you know the train was coming? There must’ve been a degree of certainty to ensure that you would eventually receive these abovementioned ‘good things’. A twilight zone formed between the probability of encountering the train and some sort of faith formed by trusting your mother or, at a more complex level, trusting the train’s routine as you’ve come to observe its dependability. 

Through this twilight zone you came to wait, either by force or by faith.

So, what do you do when confronted with situations where you could – readily –  walk away from the wait entirely? Naturally, you wouldn’t receive the ‘good thing’ that the wise old ‘they’ have extolled through proverbs. However, in this particular situation, there is very little gauge of probability and there is virtually no observation of dependability through pattern formations – essentially there is a very high level of uncertainty.

Let’s put the question to the floor- any takers?

Some wise old soul would bring up the principle of the rational investor : risk versus reward, taking up the investment where there is the least risk for the most reward. Naturally, there seem to be quite high risks as there isn’t much data available for the calculation of the probable outcome.

But, in life, how can we measure ‘reward’ ? Is it how badly you want the ‘good thing’ or is it the value of the ‘good thing’ itself? Our wants may override the value of the reward in itself – where a burning need for a toffee may elevate the worth of a 50cent sweet exponentially. Such is human nature;  to offset numerical values with emotional or intuitive interventions.

Waiting for me to get to the point, already? 

I have no point, other than to ask you, would you wait for something even though you had no idea whether or not your investment would yield sufficient return for time spent waiting with escalating opportunity costs?

I also think that, even if the investment does yield some kind of return, would we not begin to resent the yield if it does not live up the costs incurred to obtain it? Waiting could also, itself, be detrimental as it may build unrealistic expectations.

Just throwing a few thoughts out there. Curious.