Fighting for Independence

I fight for my own independence and piece of mind every second and every day of my life. One thing I have to get used to now I have returned to my family home is the diminished sense of freedom. How apt that it is Independence Day today. Whilst at university I was more or less my own agent. For better or worse, I lived by my own agenda. And I enjoyed it immensely, not having someone yell at you for sleeping too late, or for eating badly, or for not doing your washing. But at the same time, I didn't really do myself any great favours by ignoring or putting off things which needed to be done. Now I'm back, it is tempting to regress to late childhood once again, but I know that that isn't possible. I want to stand on my own two feet, but to achieve real independence means to have become either entirely self-sufficient, or to have built a new system upon which you can rely. Sometimes you have to comply with others wishes to get ahead. Individualism can never make you really happy, because as "Into the Wild" showed, "Happiness is only genuine when shared." Nonetheless, although I must follow certain rules or guidelines, I do not really do so with genuine gusto, if you catch my meaning. I do so reluctantly, and although I wish I could commit myself to fully engaging with the situation, I have developed such avoidance techniques that can distance myself from the problem. Even writing this very posting is technically 1. an avoidance technique and 2. breaking a rule set down primarily for my own benefit.

As I have stated, it might be done with the best of intentions, and although I offer myself the very best of advice, I very seldom follow it. I am very illogical. What is even more confusing is that I like my illogicality. So much of my time I am stable, dependable and constrained I feel it is good to have a part of you which remains wild, untamed and bottomless. The issue with the anarchistic views express by the likes of Kropotkin or even Oscar Wilde in his 1891 essay "The Soul of Man under Socialism" is that the solution they offer would throw up such terrible problems. On the face of it, the picture Wilde paints is beautiful. "One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all." But it's all too perfect. It doesn't realise the innateness in man to have conflict. It's so sad to admit it, but strife is one of the few common aspects of almost every period of history. Very seldom has there been an extended period of peace and harmony. The abolition of private property or the state would devolve us into hunter-gatherer types, where what is 'mine' is what I hold. Striving for a common good only works so long as people agree, and this does not always happen. Perhaps the topic has veered slightly off course, but nonetheless, I live in this state of semi-independence for the timebeing, and I shall make of it the best I can.

"And you wise men don't know how it feels, to be thick as a brick." Jethro Tull, 'Thick as a Brick'.