We can understand a free person as a person who can go places and choose what to do or not to do. In other words, we are talking about power as a possibility, so freedom is being open to possibilities.
When we talk about being free and being open to possibilities, we need to pay attention to the fact that we are free to make the choices that fit us, but we have our limitations. Some things are not up to us to choose, they are “given” to us by life independently of our will. To speak of freedom is also to speak of choice. We can, for example, choose between accepting a new job offer or rejecting it. Choosing between going to a party or not going because our partner didn't approve of the idea. These are possibilities and the choices are always ours, as well as their consequences, whether good or bad.
We often get carried away by the hubbub of the world, allowing people to decide for us. But does what makes sense to the other person also make sense to you? Not often. That's why the exercise of authenticity is so important, after all, the consequences of choices will always be yours.
Being able to choose, on the one hand, makes us powerful and happy and, on the other, limited and sad, because when we choose a certain thing, we necessarily abandon another. To choose is also, in some way, to lose. That is why the search for self-knowledge is so important, so that we can appropriate our desires and make choices that overcome the experience of loss and enhance the feeling of joy and the exercise of being free.
Good choices everyone!
Let nothing define us, let nothing subject us. Let freedom be our very substance, since to live is to be free.
Simone de Beauvoir
