Freedom

Those who were hopelessly oppressed claimed that freedom was a state of mind; the “Don’t worry, be happy” argument that allowed them to simply accept their existence and avoid some positive action.
He’d realised that freedom wasn’t about having choices and being able to make those choices. No, freedom, he now saw, was about making decisions and then acting on those decisions.
Then he’d realised that freedom had tangible components.
To his surprise he’d notice that in his case, freedom was loud; strangely calm, but very loud; the rush of a strong blowing wind. He’d never been on a ton-up motorcycle ride but guessed that this would be the sound, although, with his luck, there’d probably have been the sound of sirens and the flashing of lights as well.
He came back to the present.
He thought about the events that had brought him here.
This process of consideration was, in and of itself amazing. The time dilation effect was immense as he carefully considered the sequence of seemingly unconnected, almost random moments stretching back over an undefined period of time.
He tried to pin down when it had started, but failed. So he tried to put a date on the earliest of the memories he did have, but that seemed to just elude his grasp.
Apparently his office wasn’t a bad place to work. In fact the regular surveys assured him that the local team scored highly on trust, respect and camaraderie. The impression that you were left with was that the local folks were a united front against the senior management’s Machiavellian machinations and the corporate insanity. But it wasn’t really convincing.
Every morning he felt the sun cloud over as he drew into the office car park.
He switched off the engine and the silence fell as the blaring music ceased, it always seemed to be the same track, “Iridescent”, Linkin Park, cold, desperation, hopeless, failure, sadness, frustration; he generally didn’t acknowledge the uplifting imperative to “let it go”...
He waited briefly in the silent pause, his ears ringing, before opening the car door and rising to stand beside the vehicle. Each day he remembered the opening scene from a movie about some guy called Joe and a volcano where the office slaves trudge into a grey, dark, dank tower.
He hoisted the laptop bag onto his shoulder, not really noticing the extent to which he sagged under the minimal weight and joined the steady inflow; waving his ID as appropriate, passing the guards, the security barriers and through the mag-lock doors.
Each such day was a litany of missed deadlines, ever increasing workload, ever decreasing resources and time; and all the time he was getting older and the likelihood of meaningful escape was receding.
The problem wasn’t specific, it was the relentlessness of the situation.
Against the sound of rushing wind, he considered this revelation; there weren’t specifics, it was the seemingly endless decades of grinding sameness stretching before him.
He switched focus and applied this new insight to the rest of the things that had been, until a little while ago, burdening his mind.
Each was a fragment of a life spent repressing one thing after another.
The multitude of decisions made by others to which he simply complied.
The array of arguments that had not been had despite the seething rage burning in the pit of his stomach.
The opportunities not grasped because somebody else was sure that it wouldn’t work out, wasn’t worth a risk or was just a ridiculous pipe dream.
Then there were the opportunities not taken because, at the time, he hadn’t seen that they were there.
He’d never before considered any of these as regrets; they were just the chain of circumstance that had lead him through his life. But now, with the wind rushing through his hair, clearing his mind, he saw that it was the realisation of that same grinding sameness in all aspects of his world.
He was never going to change therefore his life would continue to be an endless stream of surrender and compromise; the frustration and fury fuelled by the increasing desperation of getting older, of having less time to make a difference.
He didn’t know what had been different this morning, but he’d made a decision, it was a small one but it had set him on another path.
He switched focus again and considered the specifics of the morning.
His routine had been identical to every other morning; the waking, breakfast, shower, dress, laptop, briefcase, out the front door...
And then he’d stopped.
It was a lovely morning, as they often were at this point (the sun wouldn’t be cloaked until he drove thirteen miles south and arrived at the car park). It was April. There had been rain and it had washed the sky, which was now that clear, crystal blue that only happened as the sun was rising in the spring.
The house faced south; as he stood with his back to the closed front door the sun warmed his face, he closed his eyes and breathed in the fresh cool air.
He could hear birds away off in the distance but otherwise the street was peaceful.
He hadn’t been aware of consciously relaxing his hand but the high, metallic sound of the keys hitting the path caused him to open his eyes and look down, and in that moment something shifted. He bent and picked up the keys remembering a short story by Stephen King about a travelling salesman who allowed a light to make a decision for him; he smiled.
He turned, with the sun to his back and looked down at the keys that were now in his hand; front door, back door, shed, garage and side gate, plus a couple of others that he couldn’t quite place. He looked from the palm of his hand to the letterbox in the front door and back again. For a moment he considered the stand of bushes and trees across the road, they were easily within throwing distance. He lifted the outer letter box cover with his left hand and worked his right hand carefully into the opening. Rather than just dropping the bunch through the letterbox he flicked them to the left, doing this would prevent them from catching and jamming under the door when it was opened later that day.
He turned back to face the sun.
He shrugged the laptop bag on his shoulder to a more comfortable position and picked up his briefcase.
There was nobody else in sight which was usual for this time in the morning in such a suburban cul-de-sac.
The next step was just as easy; he reached into his pocket and withdrew the car key. Blipping the remote twice unlocked all of the doors including the boot, which he opened and swung his bags into. He closed the boot, blipped the remote twice more to deadlock all the doors.
He “posted” the car key with the same care as he had the house keys.
Once more turning to the sun he felt strangely unburdened and began to walk toward the city centre.
He came back to the present and acknowledged that the sun had stayed shining from that first point in the morning right up until now. He tried to stay out of the shadow and in that sunlight as much as he could all morning. His only concession being the necessary trip through the building lobby, into the lift up to the top floor and the wandering around in the hallway to find the access door to the roof.
From the roof to the present had been the instance of acting on a decision; the step from oppression to freedom.
He’d learned that freedom wasn’t a state of mind and that it was noisy.
He’d learned that freedom seemed to last an eternity despite the protestation of his conscious mind that this was but a few seconds...
And then the sun went behind a cloud... and he felt the deepest chill he’d ever experienced burn his soul.
In a split second the simple clarity of the morning, the calm, the sense of decisiveness and the expansive calm of freedom was washed away in a wave of terror... the terror of an irreversible, bad decision.
The suddenness and loudness of the scream caused everybody to stop and look upward.
They registered the situation in stunned silence.
The only sound was the screaming which terminated abruptly in a bone crunching, organ bursting, flesh rending thump; followed by silence.. The sound of freedom, clearly, could be very different depending upon one’s perspective.
There was a pause, and then the world shook itself and started again.