If Independence is the ability to do what you want, when you want and where you want, then let me start by breaking down the basic notion of independence for you.
Are you really independent?
Can you really be independent?
Will you really want to be independent?
Before everyone jumps to the obvious answer, I want you all to really think hard about it. “What does independence really mean to you?”
Most decisions that you will ever make in your life will revolve around social interdependence (each and everyone around you), and it doesn’t really take your freedom away. You are a social being. You don’t live your lives alone.
Independence, liberty, privacy, freedom – these keywords made a lot of sense in the 19th century (maybe most part of the 20th as well). Now it almost seems like we are on the other side. Interdependence and openness are the keywords that characterize where we need to head to.
In a world full of CCTVs that keep watching you and social media channels where you claim to share your innermost thoughts and secrets with strangers, what does privacy and independence really mean?
In my view, independence is a basic notion of whether you are maneuvering your life enough to be excited and happy about what you are doing. Independence means whether you have figured out those 2 things that give you supreme joy amongst the 50 other things that are mundane and part of ‘have to do it’.
I see a lot of teenagers falling into this trap of freedom with the notion of wandering away from the physicality of this world. While that’s a choice that people can make, I think it hurts these teenagers within a short span of time. The rampant drug abuse and the unfocused lifestyle is a direct result to this thought process.
But then, I am sure these teenagers will ask me ‘What’s the purpose of your life?’ and I would struggle for words.
The only thought I would like people to consider is ‘Happiness is self generated, not event triggered’.
Your independence is your ability to be happy, no matter what the situation.
Wishing everyone a happy 72nd Independence Day! (15th August, 2018)
