The root of the word free is thought to be the Sanskrit Pri-, which means to love (as in the word priya, meaning beloved). Discovering that love and freedom share this etymological ancestry can be surprising, given that in our daily lives, the two often seem at odds.
On one hand, we long for freedom, experienced as an irrepressible desire to do as we please as individuals. On the other, we deeply crave to love and be loved, even when the perceived bounds of love restrict that very freedom.
There is, of course, an endless maze of philosophical, psychological, and theological arguments regarding what freedom and love actually mean. However, let us inquire into their meaning in our daily lives without wandering too deeply into those academic labyrinths.
The difficulty of matching words with emotions
What do we really mean when we say we love someone or something? Emotional experiences cannot be as neatly isolated as the words we use to describe them. They are highly complex states, and naming them usually requires stripping away that complexity merely to facilitate communication.
Thus, when one claims to be in love with a person, an object, or an idea, one is actually in a complex state that may encompass attachment, desire, pleasure, care, compassion, jealousy, anxiety, and insecurity. Furthermore, we hold a range of intellectual ideals about what love ought to be. While we may theorize love as selfless or transcendental, our lived emotional experience often tells a conflicting story, further complicating how we label these feelings.
Ultimately, what we think of love, how we emotionally experience it, and how we express it are all deeply conditioned by collective cultural and intellectual norms.
The same holds true for freedom. The state of feeling free, or the pursuit of it, is a similarly complex emotional experience intertwined with numerous other desires and equally conditioned by external concepts.
The contradictions
When we label an emotion as ‘love’ toward an object—whether a thing, a person, or an idea—there is often an underlying desire to possess it. This notion of possession is complex; it may not involve physical ownership, but rather a certain level of control, influence, or the ability to mould the object. More broadly, to possess an object of love means to grip it so tightly—psychologically, intellectually, and emotionally—in order to meld its identity with our own.
Crucially, this desire to possess is rarely recognized for what it is. Instead, it conceals itself beneath layers of other genuinely felt desires, such as ‘wanting the best for them’ or ‘caring for them.’ This is not to say that human beings are not capable of experiencing a sense of genuine care for others. Most of us do, repeatedly. But most of us also fail to notice (or quite simply ignore) the accompanying desire of the self to possess. Consider parental love: parents might feel a strong desire to be totally devoted to their child and label this devotion as love. Yet, this untiring care is frequently accompanied by an underlying, unexpressed desire to shape the child’s destiny. The parents may seek an emotional and intellectual grip so strong that the child becomes an extension of their own identities.
Concurrently, there may exist a seemingly contradictory desire to be possessed by the object of love, especially if it is perceived as better, nobler, or greater than ourselves. To be possessed in this sense does not necessarily mean being explicitly owned or controlled. Rather, it means being so utterly gripped by the object of affection that one’s own sense of self recedes and merges into the other. Returning to the previous example, parents often go to such extremes in their devotion that they willingly sacrifice their own autonomy, allowing their lives to be entirely defined by the needs and desires of the child.
However, acting on these desires inevitably leads to frustration. We find that we can neither possess nor be possessed completely. We can possess a flower, yet we cannot prevent it from withering. We try to possess another person, but their inherent autonomy ensures this possession is never absolute. Conversely, if we surrender to the will of another—placing their needs above our own and making endless sacrifices—resentment eventually builds, particularly if our devotion is not reciprocated. Something deep within us ultimately rebels against these attempts to possess and be possessed.
That rebellion is what we might call the desire for freedom.
So then, if we see this clearly from our inquiry thus far, the desire for freedom — often experienced as a resentful response to the emotional weight of this so-called ‘love’ (or other more obvious experiences like oppression and domination) — is this deep-seated desire to break free of both the urge to absorb others and the urge to be swallowed by them. It is a longing for a state of inner steadfastness where one’s actions are no longer controlled by these concurrent and contradictory urges.
Does this imply that freedom requires an inability to love, or an inability to care for others? Are freedom and love, fundamentally, true contradictions?
Discarding names
As touched upon earlier, the first problem lies in the very process of naming and labelling.
If one learned to be aware of with all the honesty and rigour (not just intellectually, but in one’s daily life) the numerous concurrent and contradictory experiences that arise under the umbrella terms like ‘love’ and ‘freedom’, then perhaps one might begin to see things differently.
By recognizing that a simplistic word like ‘love’ hides far more than it reveals, we can drop its immense cultural and psychological baggage. This allows us to come face-to-face with the paradoxical nature of our own experience, perhaps even allowing ourselves to be amazed by it. It also requires us to drop the subtle deception we inflict upon ourselves and others when we carelessly wield the word.
Similarly, instead of seeing freedom as the opposite of relating to others or being bound to them in truly meaningful and caring ways, if one could rather recognise the desire for freedom as an urge to break free of the self-perpetuating cycle of wanting to expand one’s sense of self by swallowing others selves or by merging it into them, one could perhaps glimpse something beyond the superficial conflict between freedom and love.
Moving beyond this conflict, our contradictory desires themselves become the objects of inquiry. Following this thread, the contradiction soon reveals itself as a paradox: the more we possess, the more we desire to be possessed, and vice versa. The more individuality we claim, the more we ache to belong to another. This bewildering paradox is the true engine behind most of our endeavours, hiding beneath the endless deceptions of innumerable labels.
And so, by extension, what one is actually seeking in the name of freedom is a ‘way out’ of this paradox, if at all such a way exists.
Beneath the paradox
When one seeks to possess (i.e. to subsume the other’s identity into one’s own in the name of love or simply domination) an underlying assumption is that doing so would somehow add something to one’s sense of self (often in the name of another umbrella term “happiness”), by filling a gap or an empty space, or perhaps by proving ones strength of character etc. And this allows one’s sense of self to grow more secure in its knowledge that it is in control, that it can make itself bigger, better, stronger, more complete etc.
And herein lies a crucial discovery: the self — the bundle of all that is known—seems to be engaged in a perennial battle against mortality i.e. the unknown. Expanding and strengthening itself are perhaps the only ways to keep up the existential battle against the unknown.
The more it can swallow the other, the more certain it grows of its own existence
Similarly, desiring to be possessed is another act of self-preservation. It is a way to battle mortality by seeking refuge in the ‘other,’ or in immortal ideologies that will outlast the physical body. Whether we seek to live on in the fond memories of our descendants, or experience the exhilaration of merging into a lover or a deity, the underlying motive is the same: an expansion of the known i.e. the self in its battle against the unknown.
The more it lets oneself be swallowed by the other, the more certain it is of its own existence.
When one clearly sees this mechanism, the paradox dissolves. It is simply the self’s desire to expand and continue, a desire that can only be sustained if there is an ‘other’ to possess or be possessed by.
In other words, the ability of the self (the known) to expand depends entirely on this tension with the other (also the known). The dual desires to possess and be possessed are mere emanations of the same tension. Both are parts of an elaborate play designed to keep the ego going.
But what would happen to the sense of self if this tension with the other were to disappear? Can the self exist without the other? Why must the self continue?
Upon arriving at these questions, intellectual inquiry reaches its limit. All one can do is watch and observe, refusing to retreat back into the maze of theory. This actual, visceral awareness—often born from the exhaustion of suffering and the consequent need to end it, and backed by an unwavering refusal to deceive oneself—is the very thing that winds down the play of the ego. It is precisely our lack of awareness of the complexity of our experiences and their implications that causes us to use deceptive, simplistic labels in the first place. And it is through those labels that we manifest the agonizing conflict of desires — the play.
Needless to say, it is important here to be careful of the words like awareness, which can once again be deceptive. An intellectual knowledge of some of one’s hidden motives isn’t quite the actual awareness. Seeing (without the lens of motives) these motives do their work in real time, for instance in one’s interactions with the others, and in one’s thoughts, desires and fears, is the real actual flowering of awareness, the actual unravelling of the play.
It is in such awareness that our mental processes may finally reveal themselves to be as they are— not contradictory or paradoxical but simply as emanations of the same fundamental desire of the self to expand and persist It is then that the concurrent and contradictory desires begin to loosen their grip. The paradox begins to fall apart.
And are freedom and love two separate states then?
Is freedom the capacity to love without even the idea of the other?
And love nothing but the freedom from the idea of the other?
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