In the Spirit of Freedom By: Mikayla Flanz

To say what you believe. To do what you want. Be who you want, learn what you want, love who you want. To live as you choose.

In the short stories by playwright, Sophocles, Oedipus the King and Antigone the concepts in the overarching theme of individual freedom was stripped from the underlying characters, where every time they acted on something or made a decision they faced devastating consequences. While in the real world this stands true, the idea of individual freedom can also open up a world of  positive possibilities that do NOT end with your entire family dead, forcing yourself blind, or discovering you had children with your wife/ mother. 

Although defined as a natural born right in certain regions of the world, the term freedom is an umbrella topic. Of which, depending on who, what, or where the situation is taking place it dramatically varies. Despite the will of movements designed to break down the wall that divides those of freedom and imprisonment, whether that be institutional or personal, it exists as clear as day. 

I am only a teenager. So for me and most, if not all of my classmates individual freedom can be seen as a foreign term to us. Between parental restrictions and spending over eight hours in school each day there is little that we can control for the next two years until we turn eighteen. Once that anticipated day comes we can travel where we want without hesitation, see who we want without the judging eyes of guardians, pretty much do as we please (within legal boundaries). Yet until that day of glorious freedom, I, along with any other typical sixteen year old will speak when spoken to, complete my homework, and return home at curfew because those are my boundaries to my individual freedom.