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Showing posts with the label Ownership

How Much of Our Life Is Really Ours?

We often talk about individual freedom as if it is something very simple. You have a choice, you make it, and then you live with it. But is it really that simple? What happens when the choice you want to make hurts the people who raised you? What happens when choosing yourself means disappointing your parents? And what if you have been taught, for most of your life, that making your parents unhappy is itself a kind of wrongdoing? Then what exactly are you choosing between? Is it really between what you want and what they want? Or has it slowly become a choice between your own life and your guilt about choosing it ? I think this is where the idea of responsibility becomes much more complicated. We are raised by people who make countless decisions for us before we are capable of making any decisions ourselves. They choose our school, our food, our surroundings, our education, sometimes even the way we are supposed to behave. They do all of this because they are our parents and because th...