Freedom is one of humanities top-3 desires, together with health and happiness. Although health for many people is their well-deserved number one, freedom is one of those other foundations that make life good. That explains why we punish people by sending them to prison, or by taking other liberties from them. That is how we justify a lot, actually.
A big word, freedom, though we use the word all the time these days. Well hey, we’re freedom camping in New Zealand. How lucky are we? Although the freedom bit in freedom camping is relative as well. It means we are free to camp anywhere we like, just as long as we (A) stick to all the rules considering camping in New Zealand, (B) avoid private grounds and (C and most important) avoid to accidentally get in the way of the wrong people. Yes, as free as we are, our freedom is well limited. But for good reasons if you ask me, as some freedom campers already exceeded the reasonable and spoilt some of the wonderful environment.
That seems to be a fact of life; as much as we desire freedom, we find it hard to deal with too much of the good stuff. Too much freedom is like too much power; it tends to get the better of people. In history and politics, we find endless amounts of prove on how person or people A restricted person or people B in their freedom. So I or we can have more of it for our selves. In New Zealand for example, the Maori people were shamefully played by the government for their land. But at least New-Zealand came a long way to make up for all this. A few weeks ago, in the South of Patagonia, we witnessed historic display of freedom driven crime against humanity beyond repair. I was particularly disappointed to find out Charles Darwin played such a key role in getting the Indians extinct. But don’t even get me started on politics today…
So how about a plea for the freedom to put up some restrictions? For is it not restrictions that make you aware of how good freedom feels? We are restricted by so many things, like rules and laws, the fact that we live in a society with other people, plain basics such as time and money, and even our own limitations and limited comprehension. The couple we meet on a freedom campsite demonstrate how good restricted freedom can be. Two friendly elderly people on a small government pension, travelling in a rusty old campervan with two diabetic - fat - cats in the back. And they’ve got a whole lot of serious frustration going on about all the changes New Zealand is going through. But if they get away from it all in their rusty van, they spend time on their beloved free ‘Reid farm’, named after the farmer who donated his land to freedom camping 15 years ago. And they enjoy every bit of their three days of freedom. They demonstrate how freedom loses it’s meaning, without restrictions to overcome. Without restrictions, all the excitement and achievement seems to fade.
There is much - much - more to say on freedom. For example on how we are all free to pursue it. And on all sorts of freedom; like the freedom of choice, the freedom of speech, the freedom of thought and even the freedom to mess up. I’d rather leave all that to bigger minds. But if you’re hungry for it, you might want to read ‘Freedom’ by Jonathan Frantzen. We loved it.
For now we are absolutely enjoying the freedom of travel that is given to us. Knowing how lucky we are to have some restrictions, but not too bad and not too many. Plus, we have somehow managed to learn to like restrictions, such as the lousy weather we’ve had last week. These restrictions turn out to be travel companions, or sometimes even travel necessities, as they prevent us from drowning in freedom of choice.
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