To Be Free

 

For a moment, she wanted to feel what it was like to be free. Gamze opened her arms to the wind and stuck her head out of the car. "It's good to be free, this is freedom!" she shouted. She smoothed her disheveled hair with her hand and sat back down. "It's great to be free, to go wherever you want whenever you want. Free as a bird!" she said.

 

Finally, her dreams had come true. She had resigned from the company she had been working for years. She and Mehmet had bought a caravan and left Istanbul. Mehmet thought it won't last long. He could hardly believe that his wife would adapt to caravan life after living in the big city. Gamze grew up in a family of means. She was handled with gloves.  So whenever they had conflicts in their marriage Gamze would immediately run to her mother. When she couldn't go, they would talk on the phone for hours. She couldn't do without seeing her mother, without hearing her voice.

 

Mehmet remembered that when they got married, they had even arranged the house so that they could be near her mother. They couldn't find a house like they wanted. Gamze would find a fault for every house they found. She called one small, other one big, another one old. Finally one day she voiced her real concern. She put a dot on a blank piece of paper on the table then he circled that dot.

 

- My dear, do you see this dot, she asked Mehmet.

 

- Yes, what is this?

 

- Look Mehmet, here is my mother's house. I want our house to be in this area, okay?

Mehmet did not know what to do then.  But he had accepted his wife's request to make her happy. Now they were going to live in a caravan. How could it be possible? She would be away from her mother and her close circle. Mehmet was in wonder about all these developments. But he thought putting a distance might be good for the recovery of their marriage.

 

At first everything was great in the caravan. The sea, the sand, the sun... As the days progressed, Gamze slowly started to complain. Her first complaint was that she couldn't find the brand of coffee she drank every morning. "Do you realize that I haven't had coffee for three days?" Then she complained about having no signal on her phone. "I haven't heard from my parents for two days." Then she complained that she couldn't get hot water when she wanted it. "Look at my hair, it's like a broom."  She started looking for her old routines. She also had to take a break from social media. "I'm losing followers, people expect me to post regularly." She spent minutes in the forest trying to find a place with internet reception. She sprained her ankle on the way to the caravan and cried in pain. Her knees were bruised. She was free, just as she wanted, but unhappy. After five weeks of complaints, Mehmet confronted his wife. "Do you want to go back home?" he asked. Gamze had been wanting to hear this sentence for days. Even though she wanted to prove to her husband that she could cope with difficulties, she missed her mother, her clothes, the comfort of her home. "Yes!" she said, crying and nodding her head. They were both silent on the way back.  "We will be free like birds..." Gamze had said as they started their journey. Was it really possible to be free like birds?

 

It’s true; one day, one could lose everything they have. But was she ready for that? While she still hadn't given up on coffee, phone, social media, her mother’s care. How could one be free like a bird?

 

Human beings leave themselves without options when there are so many of them. Then they think they are free. But what is freedom? Is freedom to be able to do whatever you want? Can shouting "I am free!" make them free?

 

The Experiential Design Teaching says: "A person is as free as what they can give up."

 

What comes to mind when we think of addiction? Someone in worn out clothes, sleeping under a bridge, perhaps... Someone sitting with a bottle wrapped in a newspaper. What about our addictions to our loved ones, our possessions, our home, our car? Whatever it is we can’t live without…

 

You are free only when you can overcome your addictions.

 

Can you give up on all the means you have? Can you be happy in their absence?

 

Can you say "yes, I can live without it" to all? 

 

If your answer is "yes", then now you are truly free.

Now you can truly enjoy life…

Experiential Design Teaching is a knowledge community that produces strategies for designing our future based on past experiences.

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"There is only one thing in life that never can be discovered; The better one..."

Yahya Hamurcu