Freedom in Disguise
“Freedom,” Sartre is supposed to have said, “is what we do with what is done to us.”
That quote hit home following the election results of late 2024. It sure felt like something was done, inflicted upon, a great many of us. I’m sure much of the world and many allies are feeling that too these days.
I wrote about the Loser’s Lap I took the day after the election. Running was something I could do, a way I could respond to that blow, exercise some small and personal freedom.
Weather that Wednesday was stark contrast to the mood of half our country. Blue skies and a fulsome sun rolling low atop the tips of leaf-bare branches. Temperatures would test record highs that week.
My run brought me to a soccer field neighboring an elementary school. Kids were outside crowding their jungle gym, some in t-shirts as they swarmed its dome and monkey bars. I could hear their indistinct shouts each time my rounds brought me near.
As always, the strain of those many strides gently shakes ideas loose from the brainpan. Like a prospector sifting soil through a screen, the mud and silt of aimless thinking washes away, revealing sometimes a nugget or two.
That afternoon as I ran, my mind wandered to and lingered with the notion of freedom.
More to the point, the ways in which it’s not what it seems. I thought of those kids reveling in unseasonably warm weather.
Wearing a t-shirt outside in early November New England sure feels like freedom, and on a given day it absolutely is. If you have the chance to do so, I highly recommend it. But if those near-record highs are symptomatic of a changing climate—that indicates a very gloomy forecast for our individual freedom.
More houses flooded and destroyed by fire. Water and food supplies choked by drought and heat. Countries upended by severe weather, destabilizing neighboring nations with the rafts of refugees that arrive. If this partial list strikes you as the opposite of freedom, then I think you’re on to something.
Actions that feel like liberation in the moment often lead to a future where we’re far less free. You are free to smoke a pack a day, sure. But long term, lung cancer and a shortened lifespan are poisonous to freedom.
“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” We attribute those words to Thomas Edison. And the quote works just as well if we swap out opportunity for freedom.
Choices and habits that demand effort and diligence sure don’t feel like freedom at the time. The work of organizing and maintaining a workplace union could certainly land as a burden. But the freedom that comes from having a voice at your job can echo positively throughout a career and lifetime.
Does exercising feel to you like a chore? Wouldn’t you rather have that hour “free” to thumb through social media or watch football? Yet working out can add years to a life and life to those years. What could be more freeing than that?
Freedom, it certainly seems, delights in wearing a disguise.
Play this game with the many actions and choices of life, and you’ll develop a good eye for seeing through the parade of pretenders posing as freedom. They look fancy and flatter us with what feels good in the moment, but the costume conceals a con.
Look closer and more carefully. It may be that quiet YIMBY friend who’s the real freedom fighter. And surprise!—your vocal NIMBY neighbor is the one engaging in community cosplay.
We don’t do big things, great things, as a country anymore. Do you feel that way, as I do?
What would it mean for the U.S. to build a high-speed rail system, to connect our divided states with so many miles of tracks and travelers? Such a project could start to stitch up and heal our gaping and gushing national rifts.
HSR exists as only a concept here; in other countries, it’s how people get to work on a Thursday. Can you imagine that—revolutionary progress becoming routine?
Would such projects be messy? Difficult? Costly? Take decades? Yep. But all that looks a lot to me like freedom in disguise.
I’ll toss one final quote at you:
“Do what is easy and life will be hard. Do what is hard and life will be easy.”
I’d like to live a life in which moonshots become mundane, in a country (and world) where expansive creative construction becomes commonplace. It’s a humanity that sees through the façade of false and fleeting freedoms, opting for the overalls instead.