Libertas, Libertatis: An Essay

What's freedom?
Freedom is the possibility of expressing your own thoughts, your own ideas, expressing it with words or with drawings, with tunes and with gestures. It is the possibility of speaking your mind for and against other people speaking their minds, of agreeing and disagreeing and not caring about it at all.
It is supporting a particular political party, or supporting none; it's having the opportunity of opting for a party instead of another one, ore merely having the chance of doing it and not doing it in the end because you can freely think that politicians are all the same corrupted people.
Freedom is being given the choice between chocolate and vanilla when buying an ice cream, after you have freely decided against staying at home and gone for a walk in the park.
You are free when, if you feel you can't leave your PlayStation for a second, you decide to turn it off; when you shake your head to a dealer who tells you their Phard shop is having a huge selling-off. Or when you decide to continue playing and buying those cool Phard jeans that cost a quarter of the original price, and in having the opportunity of choosing between feeling flattered at the compliments they got you and not giving a flying fuck.
It's when you can say no or yes to a proposal for a one night stand or for a long term relationship. When you decide to go on reading or leave it for good; when you can skip all those channels on your television to find a programme you're interested in and, not finding it, you get sick and tell the bloody device to sod off. Freedom is being able to kick your computer for not working when it should, it's being able not to purchase one because, hell, you've survived all this time without having one, so who cares if everybody has it?
It's deciding between taking and not taking drugs, between talking and not talking when you have witnessed to a crime.
Freedom is having the chance of choosing between what's wrong and what's right, between being mistaken and being correct. It's having the choice of deciding what is wrong and what is right.
Being free means you can establish what to do of your life and your death, of your body and your mind; it means you can establish if believing or not, if loving or not, if hating or not.
Freedom is realizing you are not, have never been and never will be totally, completely and thoroughly free.
It's understanding that total, complete and thorough freedom is dangerous.