Liberty or Freedom?

Many tourists take a look at that statue of Liberty, capture its glory into their cameras, narrate its splendor, and sometimes, attempt to amplify its inner significance too!

But when it comes to choosing “to be or not to be”, we all seem to be back to square one! The eligible bachelors/spinsters(now-a-days, bachelor is substituted quite acceptably for spinsters of yester days! Maybe, they are not too keen to ‘spin’ now, with the fast paced modern life taking everybody for a ‘spin’!),….. find it difficult to decide whether to give up the freedom that they had before(and become just a ‘statue’ of the liberty), when they are faced with the question of getting married(at the materialistically-right-age!

The ‘guess’ list of questions that should occurring at least at initial stages, while considering whether to get married or not, are quite basic. In fact, these question occur even when we decide to share a bachelor’s apartment with another bachelor to share the prohibitive cost of rent, when we decide to take in a business-partner, when we decide to swap our reserved berth in a train, to a needy person (or just that the other fellow prefers to have better luxury !), etc. The sample questions that occur in our mind is thus:

1) I am comfortably well off, with adequate ‘start-salary/income’ to take care of my basic need, with lots and lots of leisure, a little left-over of the money to indulge in a few of my idiosyncrasies (Sync’d with letting loose the mind for a while by loosening up the body-mind coordination, indulging in nervous stimulants of sorts). How much of this freedom am I going to give up?
2) Nobody lays a claim on my leisure, and sharing it would mean less of ‘peace of mind’!
3) Am I going to feel lonely, some kind of emotional depression, for no reason, if I do not concede to this social pressure and succumb or yield to this ritual of sharing my life?
4) What causes this loneliness actually? Where does it stem from? Is it just an inevitable ‘fallout’ of present day lifestyle, or is it the consequence of suppression of a deep urge, the deep sense of ‘belonging’? Oh! It is not adequate with that possessiveness, to manage a lifetime, since we have to struggle to ‘equip’ ourselves to ‘possess’ what we like to have? Most things can be bought with money. Emotions can be bought with our ability to fulfill the other’s emotional needs (indeed a very big challenge!) Where does this ‘sense of belonging’ pop-up, to pose a formidable threat to our very peace of mind? Is it that unless I feel that I belong to some ‘one’ ( ‘1’… o – n – e… at least), am I going to become vulnerable to that crushing ‘loneliness? What if it gets too late, if I stall the decision of ‘sharing’ life?
5) What if the person with whom I end up sharing, does not ‘provide’ me with that opportunity to feel ‘a sense of belonging’? Is it really in the hands of the other? Am I being stupid, trying to assess, judge, etc whether our mutual ‘chemistry’ sync’s well? Why didn’t the blokes who started this thing called ‘marriage’ also give a fool-proof handout of ‘how to …’ / why to… / where to…./ when to… etc for this concept? Those meaningless (seemingly at least), procedures of match-making, preceded by yet another ordeal of horoscope-matching, etc do not seem to work at all! There is no one trust-worthy around to provide a fool-proof system. And all those oldies just vanish out of the scene, not bothering about ‘after-sales-service’ tying two helpless people into a knotty-problem, gloating about to call it a marriage! It is not even worth that ‘marriage-of-convenience’ !
6) Is that sense of ‘belonging’ more distinct, unique, and quite INDESPENSIBLE, to confront the problem of imminent ‘loneliness’ at some point of time? Oh Hell! (What am I thinking? Inadvertently, am I invoking ‘hell’ even before it is due?.....) Why not practice this sense of ‘belonging’, trying it out a few times, in a safe, harmless way, just giving up ourselves a little bit, for others? (Testing it in ‘safe’ waters?).
7) Oh! Somewhere, a funny, fuzzy thought springs up… the more we feel that we belong to everything and everyone around, we may become less available to that loneliness… Is it so?

A question came up .. or rather, I bumped into it. As usual, I churn out lots of attributes to an innocent, simple question, and then set about to stir a ‘hornets-nest’ and the rest is done by others themselves, to spoil their ‘rest’(well-poised-mental-rest, ‘Rest In Peace, etc)!

By now, the urge to even take a look, at the question might have subdued. Yet, let me be ritualistic once a-gain.
With be-longing-Regards,
Psn (25th May, 2010)

http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AhHoVe7h9QVfbTgXSvUpvTSQHQx.;_ylv=3?qid=20100524182419AApmXTj&show=7#profile-info-XbuUGDmIaa

How much liberty should a person have?
How much liberty should a person have? When, if ever, should society restrict individual liberty?

My answer:
Let us try to look at it upside down, for a change!Alone on an uninhabited island, cut off from the rest of the world, but with excellent survival resources to last many generations ahead, what decides the liberty that we should have?Now, if a person drops in after some time, is it not that this new person is most likely to be concerned equally about his/her own survival too? And if so, then the liberty question comes up with just one "equation". How much are we prepared to share and co-exist? How much is our need for mutual emotional dependence? Alone, we enjoy everything, but we lack that sharing of deep emotions. But when we compromise on emotional need, the resources (the material aspect of life) gets diminished to that extent (qualitatively and quantitatively.... please see, EVEN time becomes a material, we share our quality time, forsaking a little of our OWN in favour of the other!
Well the very purpose of this 'upside-down' exercise is to EASILY reach to the very root of the problem, the question, its solution ...... what actually decides the mutual liberties we afford for each other?