During one of my summer breaks in college, my high school friends and I decided to have a short reunion and gathered at a classmate’s house and have a good time. Their idea of a good time was getting drunk and getting crazy. At the age of 18, and despite being miles from home, I haven’t had, and would not subject myself to getting myself wasted. My father drank too much alcohol and I’ve promised myself that I would not give in to alcohol.
My classmates prodded me to drink a bottle of beer but I said I would pass. Still, they insisted. They opened a bottle and put it in front of me, telling me to drink it. “If you don’t drink that, you can forget that we were ever friends”, one classmate said. I just laughed. I thought to myself, “Is our friendship that shallow that it can be traded for a bottle of beer?” I didn’t tell her though, so as not to hurt her feelings. I just watched them and joined in their conversation with the bottle of beer untouched in front of me.
Later that night, while they were crawling in their vomit, with boys ready to take advantage of them, me and two other friends who chose not to drink, took care of them. They were thankful of us the next morning and we earned a new degree of respect. That classmate who tried to renounce our so-called friendship because of a bottle of beer didn’t, after all. After several years, she asked me to be the godmother of her baby.
Being able to stand your ground despite being “different” from the rest is freedom. This is freedom from the bondage of insecurity. If you are secure enough and know yourself enough, you won’t be afraid of standing out and be hated or mocked by other people if you choose to follow your principles. You are not afraid of what others think about you, and with this, you are being true to yourself; you are free.
Whenever there is mention of “freedom”, the first thing that usually comes to our minds is imprisonment, war, or slavery. Those that are not imprisoned or not under war are considered free, which is actually true in a sense. But freedom is more than freedom from oppression by another country or being inside bars. Freedom can also be seen on a personal level. Each person on earth is suffering from certain bondages that prevent them from achieving their dreams or achieving happiness.
Ha Jin’s “A Good Fall” exemplifies other examples of bondages that people face which prevents them from achieving what they want in life. These bondages often include the bondage of the past, bondage from poverty or money, bondage from pride, bondage from love, and so on.
In the story of “The Bane of the Internet”, Yuchin possess of bondages. One of which is bondage from the past. Being hurt by her ex-husband, she wanted “to let that man see how well I’m doing” (A Good Fall). Therefore, she wanted to buy a car that she couldn’t even afford and even tried to advertise selling her kidney to try to force her sister into lending her $10,000 for a car.
Another type of bondage that Yuchin was suffering was bondage from vanity and pride. Not only did she wanted a car to show off to his husband, but “she got it into her head that she must have a car because most of her friends had cars” (A Good Fall) and if she doesn’t have a car, she feels that “everybody is doing better than me, and I don’t want to live anymore!” (A Good Fall) She also didn’t want a cheap Chinese model because she would be laughed at so she would buy a more expensive car which she cannot afford.
Yuchin’s past, as well as her vanity and pride had made her think unreasonably. Because of these bondages, she has buried herself deep in debt and have let her emotions control her life. But she got it into her head that she must have a car because most of her friends had cars. She wrote: “I want to let that man see how well I’m doing.” She was referring to her ex-husband. I urged her to wipe him out of her mind as if he had never existed. Indifference is the strongest contempt. For a few weeks she didn’t raise the topic again.
The story of “The Beauty” focuses in being a slave to a dark secret. Gina, is a beautiful woman married to an equally handsome man, Dan. However, with the birth of their daughter, Jasmine, who didn’t take after their handsome features and was “so plain”, Dan began entertaining negative thoughts about Gina, especially when she frequently hung out with Fooming, a “flat-faced” man who looked more like their daughter, Jasmine. Dan began to doubt Gina’s fidelity and had began to think that Jasmine was not his child. To prove this, he hired a private detective who went after Fooming and Gina. In the end, Gina and Fooming found out that Dan mistrusted her and to prove his fidelity, she handed him a picture of a very ugly woman. When he asked Gina who that woman was, Gina admitted that it was her and that she went under a series of plastic surgeries that totally changed her features over the years. Fooming was there to witness her gradual transformation and she cannot push him away for fear of revealing her secret. Knowing that Fooming was still a member of the Communist League which could lead to his deportation, Dan used that as a threat so that Fooming would leave Gina alone. After the revelation of the deep, dark secrets, Dan and Gina led a normal life again. However, Dan began to get reluctant to go home and began frequenting the bathhouse to be with attractive masseuses.
There are a lot of people who, like Gina, are not satisfied with what they are and have to change what they look like or pretend to be somebody else, thinking that everything will go on smoothly. However, most of the time, this will lead them into trouble. They will be a slave to this deep dark, secret, which, in time, will finally be revealed. Because of this bondage, they are not free to do what they really want to do. In the case of Gina, even if she doesn’t really want to hang out with Fooming and is causing her husband to have thoughts of infidelity, she is forced to because Fooming knows her secret and might reveal it to her husband or to other people. When the secret was finally out, she faced a new problem: that his husband might not accept what she really was in the past and might stray away from her.
However, this knowledge can also be liberating to Gina. Because of the revelation of this dark secret, she will be able to know what her husband really feels about her. If he really loves her, he would accept her past. But as the story suggests, Dan’s feelings for her has waned since he knew what she was in the past. At least, Gina will be free to move on when she knows about Dan’s true feelings.
Money and poverty are also are a big cause of bondage as in the case of Huong and Wanping. Huong, a prostitute, was desperate of leaving this dirty profession and live a normal life, but she was not able to do so because she has a big debt to pay and her limited education and the fact that she was an “illegal alien” prohibited her to do an honorable job that would also be able to pay her debt. She was also torn by a responsibility to send money back home to her parents and the money she gets from selling her flesh allows her save enough to send home and pay back her dues.
Wanping, on the other hand, was also bonded by the lack of money. He wanted to have a girl and get married. In fact, he often fantasizes having a wife and children but he as he says “I’m single because I’m too poor to get married.” He later falls in love with the prostitute Huong and wants her to get out of prostitution but he does not have enough money to help her pay her debt.
In the end, Huong and Wanping decided to run away from their debt and disappear from their friends and family so that Huong will be able to quit being a prostitute. However, as expected, this may put them in more danger, as Huong and her family will be hunted by the gang she owes money from. They also have to sacrifice the act of disappearing from everyone that they know and living in a strange place where nobody knows them.
There are a lot of people who are being slaves to poverty. The lack of money has killed their dreams. With financial freedom, a person is able to follow what he wants in life and be happier. However, too much obsession on money, or too much money can also take away the happiness that comes with financial freedom. Thus, money should be in moderation.
There are several other forms of bondages that is being experienced by everyone of us. Such bondages include bondage from sickness, bondage from smoking, bondage from alcohol or drugs, bondage from insecurity, bondage from fear, bondage from hatred, et cetera. As long as we are being a slave to something or are being oppressed by something that we cannot fight, we are being hindered to achieve true happiness. As soon as we are released of these bondages, we will feel lighter and can do everything that we want – it’s like escaping from an invisible prison.
According to Spinoza, human freedom can be achieved through one’s intellect or knowledge – “and the highest kind of intuitive knowledge is through the intellectual love of God. The more knowledge you have of God, the less you suffer from evil emotions such as hatred, anger, and envy” (Shouler). Being free from these evil emotions enables a person to experience less suffering – freedom from suffering – and propel him to focus on the positive side of things which leads to happiness and getting closer to his goals. And as one great man said, “The only real freedom a human being can ever know is doing what you ought to do because you want to do it” (Alcoholics Anonymous).
Works Cited
Jin, Ha (2011). A Good Fall. New York: Pantheon Books.
Alcoholics Anonymous. “Freedom From Bondage”. PDF. http://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.uk/bigbook/pdf/theylostnearlyall14.pdf
Shouler, Kenneth PhD. “Freedom and Bondage”. Web. Retrieved from http://www.netplaces.com/philosophy/philosopher-in-exile-baruch-spinoza/freedom-and-bondage.htm
