8. Freedom

Freedom

This Blog is part of my List of things that are neccessary for happiness. 

my boyfriend having a talk with one of his hostel guests

A certain kind of freedom is becoming rare. It is important to remind yourself from time to time that you actually have a choice in some situations, and only because one of the choices seems so obvious and so given, it is worth to reflect about alternatives and to look in which directions you actually have the space to move. 
For example if you are thinking what to study after graduation. Since I come from a relatively privileged high school, where most of the kids where children of doctors, laywers and diplomats, they saw their own choice in this narrow window of academical paths. One of my friends classmate's answer when asked what she wanted to become when she grew up was: a shepherd. 
People where asking, a shepherd? They thought she was being rebellious and a troublemaker. People where laughing, thinking she was making jokes. People kept laughing and shaking their heads. But now I met her again. She owns a little piece of land and some goats and sheep and is making her own cheese. Different types of cheese actually. And people are paying a lot for it. It is very tasty and cremy and I am ordering at least for 15€ every two weeks. 

one of the specialties that my shepherd friend is making

Now what has this cheese to do with freedom? Well, that person was keeping a certain freedom in her perspective. She kept the view for her own life wide open to all kinds of possibilities. She didn't let them be narrowed by the prospects that others around her had for her. 

This is a very important lesson for us to learn in order to understand what freedom actually means. Of course this is just one case and it happens to take place in a western world of comfort and privilege where people usually don't feel so unfree (or maybe don't see how unfree they actually are). 
We can imagine more extreme situations of choices where for example a young woman is considered to be only honorable if she is married to a man, who has a job and can reproduce with her and also keep the children alive. 
I've met women who where born into a world where the window of perspectives for them was narrowed down to this: Being someone's wife. They often grew up helping their moms with the cooking and washing (washing clothes for the whole family by hand) and housekeeping. They saw their brothers going outside to the beach to play or to learn how to ride a bike, while they themselves had to stay at home and only socialize with other girls or women in their own house. They grew up seeing their mothers being a house slave to the husband and the sons. They saw all the other girls around them doing the same thing. They were told that a woman walking around in shorts and going to the beach has no respect for herself and is going to be a prostitute. Because these where the only 2 options in that window of perspectives for women: Either a prostitute who can earn money and feed herself, but who will never find a husband and will never be respected by society, or a wife who is tied to the will of a husband who is her master. 

To me both choices sound horrible. And I feel very sorry for the women who are only given these two options by their families. I know that these situations are limited and certainly less free than the situation of my shepherd friend, but sometimes the problem doesn't only lie in the outer forced limits set by families and laws. Sometimes the problem can lie in the lack of knowledge of the individual herself. If the young woman who is about to be married only knew that there could also be other possible options, she would maybe emancipate herself from the oppressive situation. But without knowledge of the whole span of possibilities there is no impulse for a free decision. 

That is why freedom comes with education and with the ability to see what is possible. There are many projects that work on exactly this problem. It is always hard to open the minds of people who live in societies that have very narrow views on how to live a good life. But with tender education it is possible to even make the families of these women understand that the life as a free educated and self empowered woman doesn't have to be a dishonorable one. 







This TED-Talk is held by a young woman who was brave enough to open the window of possibilities for herself to a wider one where she could make a free choice.
There is also an interesting movie called "Mustang". It is about the freedom of five sisters taken away by their conservative oncle and how they try to break free.




As we can also see in the movie freedom starts with the choice. All kind of passivity and purely bearing a situation that is miserable isn't enough. Freedom can be painful and scary. Freedom can be risky and life threatening, but sometimes the choice of freedom is the way that leads to happiness and that is important to remember whenever you feel trapped in a situation that is miserable and that doesn't seem like the right choice. And in some extreme situations freedom is only possible with help from someone outside. But it is always good to educate yourself about your options and possibilities outside of the main range and to keep your eyes open for new ways to go.

7. Exercise

Hello again! We are getting closer to the last points on our list "what is happiness"
Point number 7 is exercise.

paris 2014 

With exercise I don't mean: go to a studio and run on the treadmill for an hour. That's just going to make your life dull and boring. No, for me there is a thing that is crucial for happiness that has to do with the reality of my own body and mind. First of all: we have muscles, so we might also just use them. They are awesome and our bodies can do many incredible things. And exercise should be chosen wisely to benefit with your whole being from it. Your whole being also contains a soul and a mind, so you might pick a sport that doesn't only refresh your body with new oxygen and fresh blood, but a kind of exercise that also challenges your mind and dances with your soul.
For me there are many options. My favorite kinds of sports:

Dance - It is so full of soul and mind, because you are making an interpretation of the music that you perceive and translate it directly into body movement without rethinking or judging it. Dancing is one of my favorite ways to move. It makes my soul free and happy, my movements become wild and spontaneous as I translate the feelings I create in tune with the music. Dance is also so good for your body and it motivates you and makes you happy. Just try it at home! Put on your favorite dance music and move. It will make you happier.



Martial Arts - I love kickboxing and also other martial arts. They make me feel powerful and strong and they really challenge the mind as well. The concentration has to be on the highest level in order to perform well at martial arts. If you get deeper into the philosophy of some styles you might as well find your soul deeply satisfied. In Karate for example meditation and deeper understanding of the human are a big part of the sport. They also get you very flexible and train every muscle you didn't even know you had. And you train a good endurance and general fitness.

Snowboarding - All of you who already do snowboarding know, there is no way to describe just how GOOD it makes you feel. It is a deep connection to the mountain and the landscape around you, a big exercise against your own fears and a great lesson in life to learn. It is meditative in the way you move smoothly in big curves through the snow and hear your own breath and the sound of the board swishing through the powdery white heaven. And it is exhausting as hell since you have to make very strong movements on a high speed against physical powers exercising your whole body in a high altitude.




Skateboarding - I haven't quite mastered it yet, but there was a skateboarding workshop for women in Berlin. It's called "suck my trucks" and it is rad. Skateboarding in the bowl or the big half pipe makes me feel like flying, because there is this little moment at the turning top, where you actually are flying and overcoming gravity. It is also super cool and has a lot of street credibility which can be a real boost for the ego.




Yoga - Now in the beginning of my relationship with yoga I didn't see it as a sport and I didn't really appreciate it as much as I do now. It was a journey, because apparently it really depends on the teacher. But when I found a teacher who was really good and into pushing me to try new things and do movements that seemed to be impossible at first, it started being fun and challenging. The biggest plus for me was the body awareness I learned from it and how much my lung volume expanded (which made me perform better at any other kind of sport).



Football - I mean the kind of football you play with your feet. It is probably the sport that will get you as fit as you possibly can be. You will have to do a lot of sprints and fast movements for 90 minutes and you will be motivated to give your best, because you have a whole team that you are trying to make proud. So with football it is really an emotional sport. For me the most emotional that I know. And on the other side it is a great stress reliever. And the team factor is special, it is almost like a relationship to have a football team.

Bouldering - It is the type of climbing that you do without the security rope. It is very challenging for the muscles of your whole body and you will develop a special kind of strength from it. It is also so tough for the mind because you need to be creative in order to succeed. Sometimes pure strength is not enough and you need to do a certain twist or another order of movements to make the next step possible. Also it teaches you fear management, because you will learn that there is the first kind of fear that will just paralyze you and make you sweat, and then there is the kind of fear that brings out super powers and make you look for creative solutions and motivate you to move up. And if you overcome the fears and actually get to the top, you will feel so good.

Surfing - The waves and the sea are already motivation enough to get into the water, but if you can actually use a board to ride waves it is the ultimate fun experience. Like the kind of experience where you become totally wrapped up in an activity that you feel like a child again that can totally forget the hours passing and just keep playing forever. It is also a nice sport because there is usually a great community around surfing. Most of the surfers are sharing a good spirit and being easy to hang out with.





There are so many other exercises and ways to move your body. Every one of them has it's own magic and you better go out and find your calling cause if you don't, you will miss out on a lot of fun and happiness. And exercise really improve so many things. Tonnes of studies show, what we already guessed anyway: Exercise make you much healthier, happier, prettier, smarter, more relaxed and stable. You can only benefit. Even from the injuries (I had quite a few), they usually put your life into a new perspective and you also learn to appreciate your daily health more.


so MOVE

5. Friendly and inspiring people

So here we go and take a closer look at point 5 on my list "what is happiness"...

people can have a huge impact

As humans we are social beings. That lies deep in our nature. It makes a big difference who the people are, that surround you. The influence of our family and friends, of the society we grow up in, of the culture that we identify with goes way beyond the obvious and easily perceptible. Of course we can often sense the influence. For example if our mother told us to do a certain thing, we often keep some of the learned behavior for the rest of our lives. In the first year of elementary school my mom walked me to school. We had to turn around a corner that was on a little hill and there she sometimes stopped and told me to turn my face and the palm of my hand to the morning sun to pick up energy. So we stood there for a few minutes, absorbing sunlight with our skin, eyes closed in total silence. I will never forget the feeling of the sunlight actually entering my skin and filling me with energy and joy. Now as an adult I still turn to the sun sometimes and remember these happy moments of early morning sun.
Other influence is less direct. We are not explicitly told what to wear as teenagers. Still it has an impact, what the cool kids around us wear. As a teenager I started to wear the looser and straight cut jeans from the male section in the same moment that my best friend started to wear them. We both agreed they were more swag and soon it became a normal thing to do for some of the girls around us. These influences are trends and they are not explicit, but still easily traceable.

And yet there are less obvious influences. Things that we see every day, but we are not even aware we see them and we consider them normal and don't even think about them until a person from another culture comes and tells us how strange these things are for her. For me that was the case with the daily interaction with the passengers on the subway. Born and raised in Berlin, I was riding the subway frequently for all my life. And I thought it was totally normal to get on the train, sit or stand somewhere and look down or at some posters, sink deep into your own thoughts and get off at your station. But I was told that it was the weirdest thing for people from other places. They said it was so awkward how everyone on the subway put so much effort into not looking into each others eyes. I was shocked. Did we all really sit on the subway trying to not look at each other? I studied it and found that there was some silent common agreement between all passengers to mind your own business. I never consciously agreed to that, I had never even thought about that before. But now I know how much I am a child of this city that I live in.




There are studies about certain phenomenons that occur to influence the people around the phenomenon a lot. For example suicides. It shows that every suicide in a community raises the risk of another suicide for all the members that are in the same community of the committer. Same with obesity. If you are surrounded by obese people, you are more likely to be obese yourself.
Now we can take this knowledge and turn it into something positive for our own happiness and the happiness around us. In the beginning of our lives we have not so much choice of whom to surround ourselves with. Our parents are a given thing. But already in kindergarten we can pick our little best friend. We can chose who we want to play with. And later we can chose the school we want to go to or the afternoon activities. Do I want to hang out with the skaters after school or am I going to be a member of a poetry club? Do I want to sit next to the loud and funny Danish girl or am I going to sit next to the quiet Turkish boy who is always sticking his nose into his Manga? Do I go to a school that mostly privileged and rich children go to or do I go to a school where everyone has some street experience?
And later in life we see that it is everything! The friends that surround us are so much of our lives. Our family and our neighborhood is what we interact with daily. It is huge. So be wise and choose thoughtfully. If you feel like the people around you are making you laugh, inspiring you with new thoughts and ideas, bringing you up when you are down, criticizing you when you are ignorant, and make your life worth living: you found the right people. If the people around you don't know your true wishes, don't share your passions and try to keep you on the ground when you want to fly: think about finding new people to hang out with.

Also it can be so good to find inspiring people online. I am so happy about all these women sharing many contents about their interesting lives. It gives me a more clear idea of what I want to do and how I want to be. Take Chimamamanda Ngozi Adichie for example. She is a superhero for me and makes me feel really good.





And if I ever want to have a child, how cool would it be to be an outdoor mom like Morgan Brechler for example? She gives me hope cause she delivers another picture of momhood. The picture that I see around me is not inspiring, maybe my own mom who stayed active and worked and had many friends was a good picture too, but a lot of moms around me are homely sad milk machines that can't pay attention to anything else than their child for more than 5 seconds. Scary. I don't want to be like that. So I needed another picture of a mom that I can identify with.

Also it is really good remedy to your own gender stereotypes to also watch females represent the sports and hobbies that you are interested in. Especially when they for once are not sexualised, but actually doing something. How awesome is that? Check out the nice daily life of this prosurfer.





Or these crazy women on their skateboards in Sweden...



Ishtar X Tussilago from Maceo Frost on Vimeo.


So which people in your life are inspiring you and part of the happiness you live?