Love or Freedom?

Years ago, when I was in high school, my best friend and I would climb up one our mountains after work. It was about a three mile hike to the top, and we had to do it at about one o'clock in the morning due to both of us working in restaurants. However, once we got to the top we would start a small camp fire, sit around it, and talk about life. We talked about our lives, our futures, our pasts, everything. Until finally we had nothing in our lives to discuss, so we began to look outside the norms for our discussions. We started asking ourselves hypothetical questions, and once we did it wasn't long before my friend thought up the question that is the title of this blog and the question I am now posing to you. Love or freedom.

We knew each other well enough that I understood the question the moment he asked. Unfortunately most of the people misunderstand the gravity we place on the words and are quick to answer either way. At first I created an analogy so that anyone could understand what we really meant by love and by freedom. Over time however I began to realize that even that had fallen short of its intended goal. So now I'm going to try to explain again, and hopefully I can realistically articulate what I mean when I ask you: Love or freedom?

Most of us have been in love, or what we think is love at some point in our life. Even now sitting in front of my computer alone. all I need to do is close my eyes for a minute to remember how it felt. To say it felt good would be like saying the universe is pretty big. It was like a glorious and wonderful obsession. Every breath I took made me feel better, and it seemed as though someone had replace my very blood with pleasure, and I could feel it pumping throughout my entire body. Nothing on earth could touch me, neither could any bad news or sad song wipe the smile from my face. I'm almost sure I looked like an idiot, but that didn't matter at all. I was in love.

That's how I felt my first time, and that is the love I refer to in the question. The kind of storybook love most of us only see in fables or movies. In this question you're choosing between freedom, or the one-of-a-kind true love that really does end "happily ever after". A timeless love that is worthy of legend.

Freedom is not as straight-forward as love is. Remember that these are choices that you are making outside the realms of reality. What we meant by freedom was freedom from everything. Freedom from rules, bosses, parents, and any other possible restrictions. This include spouses and children, as bad as that may sound unexplained. It is the realization of every dream or adventure you've ever had or wanted. Nothing holds you back. Most if not all of us have fantasies about places we'd like to go or things we'd like to do. The reason they are fantasies is that we cannot do them due to a restriction of some kind. These restrictions could be money, a career, school, a lover, and even our own children. Choosing freedom doesn't mean you're free from caring about our loved ones, it means we can take that trip to Paris, hunt big game in Africa, climb the mountains in India, and it affects them in no negative way. To sum up: do anything you've ever wanted and everyone wins.

The only drawbacks on the two choices are this: If you choose love, you miss out on the grand adventures. In this scenario you can't travel. Likewise if you choose freedom you cannot fall in love. This doesn't mean you won't have "lovers" but nothing close to the real thing. So way the options, think it through and post your answer, but also give your reasoning behind your choice. After all, that's the whole point behind the game.