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

6. Nature

Hello people who are striving for happiness ... We are going to take a closer look at nature and how it is connected to happiness.

paradise valley in morocco

First of all: What is nature?
The answer is not as easy as it seems at first. And actually the more you think about it, the less clear it seems. Nature is supposed to be the living environment, that was not formed by human culture. For some things that seems very clear. If you ask for example, is the landscape of Yosemite National Park nature? Yes. Are the Alps in Europe nature? Mostly yes. Are the forests in Germany nature? Hmmmmm. Historically? No. Few of the forests in Germany are actually originally formed by themselves. There used to be big old natural forests, before the Germans started to settle there and create farm land. They cleared most of the old forests. They reshaped most of the old riverbeds and replanted new forests with different kind of trees. They hunted a lot of animals and decreased most of the wild animal population in order to create fields, and to breed farm animals. So most of these relatively new forests and animals (like cows and pigs and chicken) are actually a product of culture. You won't run into a bear or a wolf in these new forests. You won't find a tearing rapid stream in these new riverbeds. It's all tamed.
Still, if we think about what we mean in our daily life with the word "nature", we see that we have lowered our standards a lot. In Berlin, if we seek nature, we go to a park. It's historically incorrect to call these parks and forests in and around Berlin "nature", but the grey concrete around us has made us desperate for some green.

gardens of the world in berlin

I've once read an article about a social study where researchers found out, that the more green areas are accessible to inhabitants of a certain area, the healthier the inhabitants are psychologically. There are other studies that looking at green plants and leaves and flowers reduces stress, calms you down and uplifts your mood. Who needs these studies? We can totally feel that ourselves. Chilling in a garden for a few hours does wonders. Every time that I take a walk in the park I wonder: Why am I not doing this much more? It's so nice!

Nature comes in all colors. Green is the obvious one. But to look at the blue water of the Adriatic Sea in Croatia makes my heart bounce every time. I am totally addicted to that blue blue water. It looks really juicy and tasty and inviting somehow. And seawater is almost a spiritual thing, because it is the material that we are mostly made of and the essence that we came from. Our cells are these little water bubbles with salt and minerals, our tears we cry taste like the sea, the sweat that runs down our bodies reveals what is under our skin. Saltwater. Eating soup makes so much sense in this circle of saltwater.
The sea has a strong healing power. I experienced that many times already in my early childhood. As a baby I used to suffer from neurodermatitis and my mother was bathing me regularly in sea salt baths to heal it. It totally worked. It was gone before I started having a conscious memory. But what I do remember is getting stung by a wasp in summer in Croatia. My mom told me to cool it off in the sea. I walked into the water and when I came out again, there was merely something like a little mosquito bite left. No more pain, no itching. A few years later my brother and me got into climbing the cliffs and rocks next to the sea and we got so bold and jaunty that I slipped into a gap between two rocks with sharp edges leaving a deep cut in my leg. I went to the water with it and within a few days only the white new skin was a like a trace on my brown legs.

The oceans of our planet are a powerful manifestation of nature. Recently going to Morocco a lot made me realize the difference between the gentle crystal and still blue of the Adria and the turbulent, wild and impermeably green waves of the Atlantic Ocean. Hearing the sound of the waves at night matches my breath and it's one of the rare sounds that makes me fall asleep instead of keeping me awake. When I started surfing I was totally clenched by how strong the ocean is. On our first day we had a surf teacher telling us to walk into the waves in a certain way to use the current in our favor. I followed him and thought I was doing something wrong cause I felt it was impossible to walk further without drowning. Over the loud noise of the masses of water falling down the waves I screamed to our teacher that I'm gonna go back out of the water and try again somewhere better. He shook his head and yelled that everywhere else would be much harder. I couldn't believe it but followed him freaking out inside but trying to stay cool on the outside. It was a day of the battle: Me against the waves. I lost in every single move that I tried, feeling my body being a ridiculously small snippet in these huge and powerful waves and currents washing me here and there. I swallowed a lot of water, got my limps and my body pulled and twisted in every direction and was fighting to keep control over this surfboard that was attached to me. It was so much fun! I know it sounds horrible, but it was fun. It kept me busy, I had a goal (to ride one of these stubborn waves) and I was surrounded by the essence of my own being. And in the end of the day I was really tired and felt like every pore of my body was washed so clean and my eyes were still watery from the salt and water still dripping out of my nose when I was already showered and sitting at the dinner table.

Nature means a lot to me personally. And I think it should to everyone. This might be dogmatic but it is the dogma that I grew up with. Our mom was teaching us from early childhood on that the environment is something to be saved because it is the basis that we live on. As children we had little Greenpeace stickers on all of our school notebooks and we knew that it was better to go everywhere by bike and to not buy things that are packed in too much plastic and that some animals and plants would become rare and in the end be extinct species. I'm glad we grew up with this consciousness, because now I am a person who highly appreciates nature and tries to live in a peaceful symbiotic relationship with it, instead of abusing and destroying it.

The happiness-factor of nature is almost inexpressible in words. So I'll just let these videos speak for me:





pure happiness