What Freedom means to me in the time of pandemic COVID-19.

Freedom means the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. In this time of pandemic, who else isn’t restraint? We live in a new normal that the society, as a collective body of multiple and united institutions, acknowledged to be helpful for the survival of the human race. Where privileged and entitled people along with the few other elites play a major role in the customer service and hospitality institutions are now humbled with the threat that does not recognize their paying checks.

Like a butterfly, we enjoyed our flying spree of the world's wonders from east to west and south to north. To and fro we have been thrilled of what else is in store in the vastness of the Universe. We are lucky to have lived such a lifespan no other living form can routinely utilize. Everything is a roller coaster. We are happy today and we are sober tomorrow. We are so into the passion and flame and then when winter comes, our hearts are as cold as the season. Everything is short-lived. Everything is lent.

Like a butterfly, we soar high and low only to the heights of our capacity to break free. There are those that live as an egg for 10-15 years before getting the chance to fly and soar. What chances do these insects had for those long years as a helpless larva? There are those that live as a butterfly only for a day and whether they don't get into a fight or an accident or famine, they still die. It's amazing how these beautiful little insects are the same in design and yet different in lifespan and hierarchy in the colony that they protect. Are we not big helpless butterflies trying to flap our tinny little wings called freedom for the nectars of the world we see as happiness?

We don't need to go anywhere to be free. Freedom is the capacity to perceive that which the sole logic and reason were able to fathom from the heart to the soul. It is the harmonious union of one's belief and feelings and emotions and cravings all fulfilled in an instance of recollection, reunion, retreat. Happiness is a choice of enjoying an ice cream melted or a soup that's freezing cold. It is the decision of savoring everything, even the unlikely and the distasteful. It is the capacity to celebrate the limited time given as a spree of being human. Then when one cycle is over, here comes another. It goes on until one perishes silently in the abyss of a lonely dilapidated avenue.

Melancholy shares a lot of redefinition of what is freedom in these times of pandemic. When all this is over and the new normal is lived by, I will certainly break free.