mukund shyam

I love to draw. I definitely don’t draw very well but I find drawing to be quite a fun mode of expression. Everyone draws differently, everyone has their own style and that diversity is what I love about drawing. 

So why am I writing? 2 reasons. First, my writing can keep up with the speed of my thoughts (most of the time) and my thoughts usually travel at the speed of sound when it comes to topics like this. Drawing takes forever for me, and I usually do it when I want to calm down or something of that sort. Secondly, I can share way more thoughts through words.

Notice I said that everyone has their own style when it comes to drawing. Everyone draws in a different way, and usually, they are not judged but applauded if they have a really different and unique style (ironically a world apart from what the artist themselves thinks. I’ve noticed that most people hate the work they make). That is the true essence of what I think freedom is. I think freedom is the right to be different, and the right to be the same. I think the term “unity in diversity” captures this beautifully: all of us are different and unique in our own ways, and yet we’re human. I think being different is not the hard part, accepting differences is the hard part. If we have freedom, we should have the right to be different, and we should also have the right to be treated the same as everyone else. As I said, different but same.

There’s an interesting hypothetical that I’ve heard: would you rather be completely free, or completely safe? Is it possible to be both, or are they mutually exclusive? If you are safe (I’m assuming this means you have some sort of protection from the government), are you stripped of freedom, and if you are completely free (assuming this means you can do anything), are you not safe? I’d take safety 9 times out of 10, mainly because of the fact that if everyone was free, the world would probably be in chaos. 

When we think about “freedom”, I’m willing to bet most of us think of democracy. Democracy is a really recent phenomenon, which, as I’m sure you already know, the people elect their own leaders. We have the freedom (note the use of the word freedom) to choose whoever we want to as our leader. But of course, it isn’t perfect. 

In a show I watched, the main character referred to democracy as the “Great American Experiment” (the show is set in the US), and I think she’s totally right. Democracy is so new that we’re still iterating, still experimenting to figure out what’s better. In the same way, freedom is also an experiment. We need to figure out what is the best balance of law and freedom, and the only way to do that is iterating on what we already know. 

Freedom isn’t a be-all and end-all, objective thing. It is super subjective, and it is flexible. And that’s how it should be. 

Thanks for reading.