Freedom within constraints.
Yana Northen • 3 September 2025
We do not choose to be born and we cannot escape death. This two are predestined. However for the space in between exists complete freedom .
At some point, you begin to sense the collision between freedom and predestination. On the one hand, the finiteness of life sets boundaries, and in this sense, absolute freedom does not exist. We do not choose when and to whom we are born, and we cannot avoid death. This is a fundamental limitation.
Yet within these boundaries, we still possess freedom of choice. There are always several ways out of a given situation, and even if each of them leads to the same final point—death—the very roads we walk can be different: either filled with meaning, love, creativity, or, on the contrary, with fear and avoidance.
It is like a labyrinth with only one exit. Yes, all paths lead to it, but the process of wandering remains in our hands, and it is precisely this, in deciding how to relate to pain, to illness, to accidents, to loved ones, that freedom reveals itself.
This idea echoes what Albert Camus once called the absurd: we strive for meaning, while the world remains indifferent. Also the paradox lies in the fact that, despite this indifferent reality, a human being continues to live, to choose, and to give events their own meaning.
Perhaps this is where true strength lies: not in denying the predestination of the end, but in filling the path toward it with the light of one’s own decisions.
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