Top of the world. The silhouette of the mountains in the distance. Trees protect me. Birds greet me. Body energized. Mind is focused on one thing and one thing only. Accomplishment. I made it. One step after the other. One step at a time. Looking forward to the top. Looking forward to the view. Looking forward to freedom. Freedom from life. For a moment, It’s just me in the world. This is what I want. That’s what I want to live for. Clarity, peace, no worries, no guilt.
A slightly darker blue where sea and sky meet. Waves playing. Wind, running freely. Birds floating in the air. Sounds of freedom. No constraints. My mind feels clear. My mind floats freely. No dark corners. Detoxed inside and out by the salt. Finally, I am free.
Freedom
As the opposite of entrapment, Freedom seems like a clear topic of interest as I try to find a possible solution against Overwhelm. There’s a stress managing practice meant to relax our body which consists of tensing up our muscles for a couple of minutes and then releasing. We are stressing out our muscles and freeing them up in order to feel better. There shouldn’t be any surprise that “joy thrives on the alleviation of constraints”.
Ever since we are children, one of our first instincts is to be free. Any parent would tell you the dangers of having a toddler in a crib unsupervised; they just want to get out. That’s how long we’ve been craving freedom.
Right now, in multiple countries across the world, we are all living under constraints. COVID-19 has forced us into isolation and into working from home environments. This means that we don’t have the freedom to go outside, visit friends, go out for dinner and a movie, or even meet with our colleagues. Meanwhile, we are all fantasizing about the moment when these constraints are lifted. We dream about having a choice and not feeling trapped in a situation with no control over our lives.
Though most of these examples are about a physical constraint, there are intangible constraints that can make us feel trapped and of course, time is one of them. This is why I am interested in freedom as a way to manage Overwhelm. Through the Labyrinth, I want the product to serve as a visual reminder of our accomplishments in the hopes that it reminds us that we have accomplished valuable steps and earned guilt-free time. This is why the object needs to show the accumulation of the accomplishments.
