Condemned to Freedom

I came across this notion during my counselling training and felt it being delightfully absorbed by my curiosity of all things existentialism. The phrase and concept stayed with me and I encountered it again recently while reading “Love’s Executioner: and Other Tales of Psychotherapy” by one of my fave existential therapists, Irvin Yalom. As we continue to grapple with ‘social isolation’ as a remedy for keeping us safe, it simultaneously raises a feeling of perceived threat to our sense of freedom. This is where, for me, it gets exciting because it calls into focus what it means to be truly free.

Freedom is something I’ve valued for a long time (yes, I even have it tattooed in Korean!), ever since I accepted it as an internal state that is in my control, rather than being an externally influenced thing that happens to me. This was pre encountering Yalom, so you can imagine the joy and intrigue I felt reading his words:

“The term freedom in the existential sense does not refer to political liberty or to the greater range of possibilities in life that come from increasing one’s psychological awareness. Instead, it refers to the idea that we all lie in a universe without inherent design in which we are the authors of our own lives. Life is groundless, and we alone are responsible for our choices. This existential freedom carries with it terrifying responsibility and is always connected to dread.” - You can read more online here.

So basically, to be completely existentially free, we take full responsibility and ownership of everything to do with oneself. Yalom says, “It is the kind of freedom people fear so much that they enlist dictators, masters, and gods to remove the burden from them.”

Now, this is where I stray a little from being a purist because I do believe the universe has a magic of its own and influence that is far bigger than I’ll even understand. I’m not sure if Yalom includes the power of the universe in his theory, but I think this could be considered a limitation for being completely and totally responsible for our own life.

What I do love about this notion is that responsibility is inextricably linked to freedom in that we are responsible for the sense we make of our world, our actions, or failure to act.

The meaning we make and the stories we tell ourselves creates our reality that exists alongside, within, in tension with, and separate from the reality of each person. Knowing this, and really owning it, means we get to say how we are and what we do without being tied to external expectations, judgements or assumptions. It means silencing the voices of others - the shoulds and should nots, the way we always do things, the expectations we feel are placed upon us or that we take upon ourselves. And this is the most difficult part that gets in the way of being condemned to freedom. 

Whether or not you desire this condemnation is another thing altogether. In this existential context, it does not seem very appealing on the surface. The wonderful thing is that there is no right or wrong answer. It’s up to your sense of agency to decide which, in itself, is tied to this notion of freedom. 

I am drawn to the adventure - the growth, the light and dark, the highs and lows, the rupture and repair - that comes with the existential seeking of being condemned to freedom.