To be free...

Some of the reason why adult life can be greyer and more miserable than it should be is that our earliest years are generally made up of a prolonged and highly formative encounter with the idea of obedience.

Throughout childhood, there is little doubt that the path to maturity must involve doing a litany of substantially unpleasant things demanded of us by figures of authority whom we cannot question.

We give over our days and much of our evenings and weekends to complying with an agenda elaborated for us by people whose concern with our happiness is at best highly abstract.

We then become inclined to extend this attitude into our dealings with the wider world. We assume that what we particularly want should never be the important factor.

In the process, we become highly adept at rationalising our frustrations. We tell ourselves that we have no option. We have to stick with a job that we resent or a marriage that has grown stale because (we say) we need the money or our friends would be disappointed or it’s the kind of thing everyone like us has to do. We become geniuses at elaborating excuses that make our unhappiness look necessary and sane.

We tend to fantasise about freedom in terms of not having to work or of being able to take off on long trips. But if we dig into its core, freedom really means no longer being beholden to the expectations of others.

We may, quite freely, work very hard or stay at home during the holidays. The decisive factor is our willingness to disappoint, to upset or to disconcert others in doing so.

We don’t need to relish this – we may by nature be inclined to get on well with as many people as possible. But we can live with the idea that our central choices might not meet with general approval.

To be free, ultimately, is to be devoted – in ways that might be strenuous – to meeting our own expectations.