The Free Man

A young man sat on a park bench, observing the area around him. He looked much like the others -- he wore an off-white shirt and off-white pants, however, his arms and legs were completely free. People stared at him as they walked by, they spit on him, called him crazy - he was an outsider.

The free man watched the people - their chains dragging languidly on the ground behind them, arms wrapped snug around their bodies in the sleeves of their straitjackets. He fought for years to rid himself of his restraints, but sometimes he wished he still had them on. Oh, sweet ignorance.

There were many more things to consider as a free man - so many more decisions to make. For instance, once you are free, do you act free? If so, what does “acting free” even mean in a world where freedom is a rarity? Do you continue to wear your restraints like the others? Do you leave the chains and straitjacket at home but move as if you are chained up? It wasn’t easy getting answers to the abundance of questions that came with freedom -- few others were free, and the free ones were disliked around here, so most of them still wore their chains to blend in and avoid ridicule.

No, it wasn’t easy being free, not one bit. The man was promised a life of glitter and gold once freed, but so far, he’s been met with challenges, shame, loneliness, and confusion. The free man found it hard to figure out what was right or wrong, up or down. He hated to admit that he envied those that walked around chained up and still none the wiser. Never questioning why they were chained up, who chained them up, or how they became chained up to begin with. In fact, the way they saw it, they weren’t even restricted. The others truly believed they themselves were free, while the free ones were chained.

It seemed so easy to see this was false to the free man sitting on the park bench -- he had no shackles on his ankles, no straitjacket restricting his every movement. How could he not be the free one? But the ones in straitjackets and shackles were adamant -- they were free, he was restrained. It made him question everything -- was he actually free? If so, should he have freed himself to begin with? What did he gain?

The problem with taking off your shackles, which the man was warned about, was that you could never truly put them back on. Your muscles change when you take them off -- you move in ways you never believed possible, raising your hands, kicking your legs, spreading your arms. After a while, your shackles and straitjacket don’t fit anymore -- not comfortably, anyways. Even if you still manage to fit into your restraints, you can never truly put them back on -- not the straitjacket anyways. Everyone is given a key to take their shackles off, it's possible to lock your shackles back on. Most people either don’t know about their key or forget about it. Not that it matters -- people usually don’t want to take their shackles off anyways. Getting out of the straitjacket, however, simply requires learning how to take it off. Once you know the trick to getting it off, you’re never truly trapped again. You can lock your shackles, throw away the key and go on living as though you are one of the others, trapped and controlled by the bounds of the restraints, but you always live with the knowledge of how to get out of the straitjacket. This knowledge makes it nearly impossible to truly go back.

In becoming free, the man also realized that nobody is ever truly trapped to begin with. As stated, everyone was given a key for their shackles, and finding information on how to escape from the straitjacket was easy enough -- just took a little digging. For the most part, everyone was voluntarily staying chained up and restricted. It seemed crazy, but the man understood why.

He thought back on his memories from before he was free -- like the times that he and his friends sat jovially chained up, gossipping and laughing at the people who chose to remove their restraints… how stupid and crazy those people must be. “Look at me now…” the free man thought “...free and alone. Crazy, I must be.”

The realization that the free man resented the most was knowing that neither path was easier, and neither path was technically right nor wrong. This is what made freedom so infuriatingly challenging for the man -- once you freed your body from chains, you gained the freedom to make a simple choice: the choice to live freely or to lock yourself back up and continue to live shackled. This choice was supposed to be the quintessential aspect of removing your restraints, but it was a choice that the free man wished he didn’t have to make. He felt as if wavered in the middle of two worlds because he could never truly decide. The man’s desires seemed to change on a whim, flowing with the soft breeze and the trickling water, which were free, like him.

To remain shackled meant fitting in, having friends, and never having to do anything for yourself or make hard decisions. A chained-up person couldn’t do anything for themselves, so they were given everything they needed. However, it also meant going against hard-earned knowledge, being unnecessarily limited, and living a monotonous, meaningless life -- it just didn’t seem good for a person to live this way. To be free meant running through soft grass, spreading your arms like wings, earning things with hard work, and enjoying the simple things in life as you wished. But, it was also lonely, confusing, and hard to navigate.

Even though the man knew he could never truly go back to his life of being blissfully ignorant and chained up, sometimes he’d use his key to lock his shackles back on and get dressed in his straitjacket just to feel safe, comfortable, and accepted again.