Freedom

The long weekends are always welcome in the summer months. The combination of winter’s imprisonment and work’s control makes a long weekend feel like freedom.

Holidays serve as a great break from power.

No work. No one to answer to. No coworkers messing with our heads. No bosses with their heel on the back of our neck. No arbitrary tasks undertaken solely for the benefit of a paycheque.

From the instant we awake we have lightness of being. With no commute to a workplace there is no feeling of control. We are momentarily carefree. The exploitation of our need for money has been halted. Our social conscience is given reprieve for 24 hours as we indulge our legal and moral right to a day away from work. We are not cheating. We are not breaking rules. In fact, finally there is a rule that works in our favor. We are the champions for a single day. We are free from the power of our employer.

While at work there is this constant drone of thought in our head telling us to keep going. Telling us to get it done. Telling us we need the money. Telling us that it does not matter if we like our job. We are lucky to have one. We are lucky that we have the ability to survive. We need the job, so we must work.

The voices in our head remind us of our weakness and our reliance on others.

Not everyone hates their job. I love mine. But not everyday. And not everything about it. And I still ask the question, “If I won the lottery tomorrow, is this the job I would choose?” I am so fortunate to say that my answer is always “Yes.”

Innate in us is the need to belong. The need for meaning and self actualization. Some of us are so lucky to have jobs that facilitate that meaning. Most of us however, do not have that kind of employment. Most of us do what we can or what we have to, not what we want. Our job does not fulfill our need for meaning or self esteem. If fulfills only our need for survival.

And that makes it feel so much more like power over us.

It is the most obvious, most constant form of power in our lives. But for our job, we could not survive and as such our need is exploited and we are subject to the control and influence of others.

Sometimes we have one of those “upwardly mobile” jobs. They are the most sublime forms of power. It is real power because it is not upwardly mobile for every one. It is competitive and only a very few of us will get to move up. But that carrot on a stick hangs there and we willingly, through the seduction of an opportunity to realize our dreams and wishes, submit to the wishes and whims of our boss and the organization.
But at the end of that stick is a shiny bauble. It is the chance at freedom. It is the ability to not be the one who is told what to do. It is the chance to be the one who does the telling. And in that rise of status comes some sense of freedom. Some hope of liberation from what we are.

We seek power to feel free. Power over others. Power to demand and command. Power to free ourselves of the daily mundane. Freedom from hunger - we have steak and caviar. Freedom from work - we have employees and domestics. Freedom from cares - we have all the conveniences. Freedom from the will of others - they will do what we say say.

Those who rise and attain the promise of more money, more holidays, more power, after some time, come to realize that it is not so.

There is no freedom in it.

We will forever be beasts who have needs. We will forever need the next meal. We will always need sleep. We will always be subject to illness, age, and fear. We will always be subject to climate and society. We will always be subject to the will of those who have given us what we sought. We will always be subject to the will of those we love. We will always be subjects to the things we desire. We will always be subject to our needs. It is the nature of what we are. There is no freedom from being human.

All the power in the world will not stop you from being human.

Being at work we are reminded that we are subject to the power of others because of our need for money.

But at least for one extra day in May we are free.