In the next few days I will be writing about several topics of general interest, I hope to get your thoughts going on these and perhaps let me know how you see these matters.

The first is freedom and free will. The first piece is from The Ayn Rand Lexicon   Where we are free to act, we are also free not to act, and where we are able to say No, we are also able to say Yes.
ARISTOTLE (384 – 322 BC)

Men will not be free until the last King is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
Denis Diderot(1713 – 1748)

Remember that to change your mind and follow someone who puts you right is to be none the less free than you were before.
Marcus Aurelius (121 – 180 BC)

I cannot and will not give any under-taking at a time when I, and you, the people, are not free. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated.
Nelson Mandela - Madiba (1918-)

A sudden access of psychological freedom often turns from sheer excitement to deep panic.
Edward W.Mann

The next quotes are all from the film the Shawshank Redemption

Red narrating: These walls are kind of funny like that. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, gets so you depend on them. That's institutionalized. They send you here for life, that's exactly what they take. The part that counts, anyways

Red narrating: I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are better left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't expressed in words, and it makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a great place dares to dream. It was as if some beautiful bird had flapped into our drab little cage and made these walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.

Andy: Here's where it makes the most sense. You need it so you don't forget. Forget that there are places in the world that aren't made out of stone. That there's a--there's a--there's something inside that's yours, that they can't touch.

Red narrating: We sat and drank with the sun on our shoulders and felt like free men. Hell, we could have been tarring the roof of one of our own houses. We were the lords of all creation. As for Andy--he spent that break hunkered in the shade, a strange little smile on his face, watching us drink his beer.

Red narrating: I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up DOES rejoice. Still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone. I guess I just miss my friend.

Perhaps freedom is not always a choice we have to make. Sometimes the circumstances we find ourselves in are the opposite of being free whether it is a person, a situation, a system, needs or an institution that takes away freedom. I mean your physical freedom, the freedom to be yourself, to express your thought and energy uninterrupted. But we always have and will have freedom of choice as this is a cognitive process and as said before the only person in complete control of the brain and thought process is you. Therefore it is possible for a man to be locked up for many many years and still to be free every single day of his incarceration. The escape that we so often need from the restrictive freedom - killers in our life, is usually just a thought away. Your escape from any restriction is within your grasp, all you need to do is think and thinking is a positive choice of freedom and an expression of freedom of will. More than this sometimes there are other people so in touch with there “personal freedom” that it is possible for them to show us the way to attains such freedom They are all around us and all we need to do if we cannot find that place of freedom in ourselves is to follow the guides of freedom, leading us into the open fields where we can share in this great freedom that should be ours as a collective body. All we can hope for is that everyone can deal with such freedom.