What Is Freedom?

I am so happy to join in on this challenge again by the ever-impressive @JonicaBradley God bless your heart.

This writing was prompted by @JonicaBradley and the rules are simple:

Challenge rules:

• Write about Freedom

• Write 100% original content

• Write at least 600 words

• Tag me @JonicaBradley

• Have fun

What is Freedom?

Freedom is the right or power to act or behave as one thinks or wants. With freedom, there is no restriction but let's look at I critically, are we really free?

Being a Nigerian, I know this and would love to share personal experiences too on each level. Are we really free in this world? There is freedom of speech and expression here in Nigeria but we are far from expressing ourselves in words or even in actions.

I am sure most of the world heard about the protest held by Nigerians and how the event eventually pans out on the 20th of October, last year, which happens to be my birthday, anyway. The youths were out there, expressing themselves, demanding their rights and ability to live, eat and sustain themselves but what did they get? Many people lost their Iives. Most people faced untimely death all because they were expressing their 'freedom'.

Here in Nigeria, there is no freedom in anything and from anything. You would even be lucky not to have your life to pay for it. We have the tongue of a lion yet our voices are tamed. We have the eyes of the eagles and yet our visions are blurred and we have been scarred. There is no freedom here and even recently they banned Crypto on an open scale. Most of us that make our posts and earn from it, go the extra miles just to get the money as the normal route has been blocked, so we pay more in charges over whatever we earn.

Bringing it back to personal lives. I would think also that working for yourself means you are free from the daily 8 am to 5 pm jobs. In as much as that sounds appealing, we can still see that there is no freedom there too. Working for others doesn't give you as much freedom as you would have liked either because your time and energy isn't yours in the long run, as long as you are still working there.

I used to think working on my own and doing things for myself means freedom until I was laid off with a large number of others in December due to the large impact of the Covid. Having my own time to work on my book, continue my posts while earning from them should spell freedom, right? No, it isn't. You find yourself trying to make ends meet and not relaxing for a minute because you want to do the extra so you can gain so much more. There is no freedom there because your time isn't yours. Every time you think you have to spare, your brain tells you to do something because money is going especially when you see the number of bills you have to sort out.

True freedom in the real sense of it cannot be achieved because we are still controlled and governed by something. There is always a driving force that makes us want to do twice as much and as long as that exists, our time and energy are never truly ours.

Freedom of expression, religion and all are still far off because you see the government interfering and trying to place restrictions here and there. Financial freedom is still yet to be attained by me as well and I believe until I can engage what I earn to work for me rather than working for money, then I still have a whole lot to do. Indeed, the rat race theory is right and I am still on my way to attaining that financial freedom where I would have my money or earnings working for me and I can just sit back, think creatively on how to multiply them even further.

I am tagging a few people who might also enjoy this prompt as cited by @JonicaBradley :

@Bjorn  @Glez  @CryptoBabe  @ChrisWrites  @fantagira @PVMihalache

I feel blessed to have my voice heard and to share my view on this.

Cc: @Hanzell