The Weight of Freedom and the Temptation of Escape
Modern democracy has gifted humanity unprecedented freedom. Yet, paradoxically, few can fully bear the weight of it. This is because freedom inherently signifies the responsibility of choice and the sting of solitude. The terror of having to find one’s own North Star in a vast ocean without a compass often drives us to flee toward an Absolute Power that offers “definitive answers.” The peace found in depending on God might, in fact, be an instinctive human defense mechanism—a desire to lay down the heavy burden of freedom.
Dependent Peace vs. Proactive Risk Management
If the stability gained by anchoring oneself to God is a world of solid “constants,” then the freedom embraced by declaring independence from God is a world of unpredictable “variables.” To be sure, the world of constants is safe. By recharging through prayer and fixing oneself to absolute values, the risk of psychological collapse is significantly reduced. However, the price of that stability is “life’s scalability.” Like a satellite orbiting a fixed path, a life of dependent peace faces no risks beyond its control, but it also finds its world of discovery severely limited.
In contrast, a life that strips away the safety net of God and leaps into infinite freedom assumes rigorous risk management as a prerequisite. When the consequences of one’s decisions belong solely to the individual, human thought becomes most fierce and the senses most acutely awake. Risk is not merely a threat to be avoided; it is the essential cost paid to expand the horizon of one’s life. It is through the process of facing and managing risk on our own that we are reborn as the true masters of the system called “Self.”
Multi-dimensionality: The Sole Privilege of the Independent Individual
Ultimately, what makes life vibrant is not a preordained grace, but the uncertainty woven from the entanglement of coincidence and necessity. If the peace of dependence is a monochromatic silence, the trials and achievements of an independent individual are a multi-colored spectrum. When we embrace even the possibility of failure as part of our freedom, our lives cease to be a script written by another and become a unique narrative written by our own hand.
Independence is not merely isolation from help. It is a declaration: a vow to generate one’s own motive power without an absolute energy source like God, and to willingly endure the noise and friction that arise in the process. Though the path may be arduous, the process of proving oneself while dreaming of infinite freedom is perhaps the most sublime efficiency—and the highest art—attainable by a human being.
To my secular eyes, prayer remains an attractive sanctuary. However, rather than becoming domesticated by the warmth of that refuge, I find it far more “human” to navigate risks and seek my own colors in the cold fields of freedom. Not begging for grace, not being trapped in the cycle of repayment, but filling the vibrancy of life solely through my own will—that is the most solitary yet brilliant form of independence I have chosen.
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