Freedom To Choose

Human race is the story of untold miseries, struggles & achievements. Many of the miseries were natural, did a lot of damage but we survived those. Some other miseries were brought by few despots trying to be the power to control the world externally but we overcame them as well. But the real misery that we are still trying to overcome is the misery of living a borrowed life. And it has a lot to do with the freedom of choice which Viktor Frankl called as 'the last of human freedoms' in his magnum opus 'Man's Search For Meaning' -

"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." - Viktor E. Frankl.

The trouble begins when we surrender this freedom of choice to external circumstances which are transient. Our circumstances are transient but the behavior pattern that we develop once we surrender this freedom becomes an integral part of our existence & refuses to cooperate & our misery continues.

In this ever changing world, one thing has always remained constant & that is struggle for individuality. Struggle to safe guard our individuality becomes a much greater challenge than struggle for survival. We learn survival techniques much faster because we are supported in this endeavor by people close to us-our parents, our teachers, our peer group. On the contrary, we are opposed by the same group of people when we try to be ourselves. They oppose because they surrendered their freedom & individuality much earlier and behave as if they were much better-off now. They feel so because they don't have to choose what they have to be; they become what the world around them wants them to be. Now they want us to live the same fallacy & conform to their ideas. 

While we have so much of struggle, failures & miseries, we also have a lot of achievements to write home about. And most of these have been because of the people who refused to surrender their individuality; their freedom of choice. The world by opposing them made them much stronger than the adverse circumstances. They protected their 'last of human freedoms' as if their survival depended on it. They surrendered everything but their right to be themselves. They didn't only survive; they lived an abundant life.