I find it easier to make hard choices than simple ones. Do you?
If an experiment isn’t working, and a better one presents itself, I switch. I am not swayed or dismayed by the hours or emotion already ploughed and tilled. Scientists task themselves with journeys into the unknown. We don’t promise to be successful. We do promise to make tough choices when they arise, as they often do. Ideally with clarity and consistency, though we are human, so in this we often fail. Sorry.
You might assume I’m also good at choosing what to eat, where to go, what to do, where to stay, what to watch on TV. I am not. I am bad. Irritatingly bad. My definition of the perfect vacation is when someone else makes all the choices. I’ll happily go anywhere, do anything, eat anything, as long as I don’t have to choose!
My struggle with choice is so profound I wrote a whole album about it ‘Answer No Questions’!
The Only Way is Round
Finding it hard to choose was on my mind, because a year ago today I was editing the text for the storysong, Both Fears, for ‘Together Apart’. If I wrote it now, I might call it Both Hopes, try a half-full vibe, but the message would be the same. Because life feels the same.
The carousel of covid-choices keeps going round and round like the airport luggage belts we can still not use. Many of the cases look like ours, but as we pick them up we find they are too heavy, too light, a little too wide, a touch too black, not what we were expecting.
So, we put it back and wait.
Surely the right one will come around soon?
Both Fears
I share Both Fears with you again today. Because it still feels true today.
Listen to the storysong, or read it below:
On a fresh February afternoon in 2019, I was strolling along the cliff-tops overlooking Half-Moon Bay with a precious friend. The type of friend whose every word enriches.
We fell into talking about freedom.
‘You know freedom always comes back to that balance between freedom-from and freedom-to,’ he said.
I stopped, the rhythm of our easy strides upset by my need to divert all mental processing to this bold statement.
I am still processing.
*********
Freedom is a powerful word. A word that fuels armies. But what does it mean? Beyond believing it our right, how often do we inhabitants of the privileged world think about freedom?
We want freedom from hunger, pain, illness, injustice. Of course. The world could have this if we chose to live in confinement, with rationed healthy food, daily exercise, restricted interactions. But we do not call this freedom, we call it prison. This pure free-from existence is our exemplar of unfreedom.
Because we need freedom-to. With our good health, full stomachs, and educated minds we want to create, grow, love, learn, feel, live. Without freedom-to life is not living.
Or so we thought.
********
In the first flush of pandemic fear, freedom-from was our only priority. It was not a radical awakening. We did not, in a mass realisation, understand that relinquishing a few freedom-tos would prevent millions of untimely deaths from poverty, smoking, obesity, climate-change. We choose to shield ourselves from problems of own making, however devastating. Far preferable to wage war on an external enemy. We know that story. We can make those sacrifices. With proud hearts.
So on Day One we willingly gave up our freedoms-to. Doing our bit. On Day 49 we were asked to start embracing them again; the story had taken an unexpected twist, hiding from the invasion as terrible as living with it. The world is powered by our appetite for freedom-tos, not our fear of freedom-froms. If we did not feed, the damage would be irreparable.
It always comes back to the balance between freedom-from and freedom-to.
But we did not rush through our gates gulping in the new air. We did not push our heads out of our bunkers blinking at the brightness of new opportunities. No. We sat on our floors rocking back-and-forth, confused. What had really changed? Was it nothing, or could it be everything?
Beyond the urgent clamour of the crisis deeper questions were clawing at our raw insides - had we got the balance right before? Could it be we were spending our lives see-sawing up and down the freedom highway, breaking our backs freedom-from clambering up to the fulcrum then blowing it sliding down to some meaningless freedom-to? Or was freedom like the horizon, always in the distance, a tantalising illusion we chase, not realising we are squandering our freedoms on the hunt?
********
In the choking fog of uncertainties,
One thing was certain.
We had no clue how to balance.
Not now, maybe not ever.
And there was no Hollywood ending in view.
Yours hopefully,
Nazneen xxx
Yours Hopefully is an experiment in living hopefully. With music and musings, from a singer-songwriter-scientist. Why not subscribe and get a post every Sunday in your inbox?
Hi Nazneen thanks for sharing your thoughts upon freedom and it was good listening to "Both Fears" again. Best wishes and stay safe. Denis ❤️