Lost Freedom

For many ages freedom has been one of the main priorities in human life. People are determined to have freedom of spirit, religion, opinion, speech; they aspire to be free to decide where and with whom to live, where to work, what to wear, and how to live their lives in general. However, a lot of people are deprived of freedom one way or another, either they are physically imprisoned or influenced by circumstances and life situations.

Physical imprisonment is one of the most devastating experiences for a human being, and affects a person in many ways, physically and mentally. Some of the factors that endanger the physical health of imprisoned people are poor environmental conditions, lack of healthy food, medicine, immediate contact with people that were familiar to them, alongside with the great damage that is done to their mental health. Being unable to continue their normal life styles, prisoners experience many different feelings and emotions: fear, devastation, feebleness, and a tremendous amount of guilt and regret for the crimes they committed; many of them develop serious depressions, however, the desire to return to the world they know and love and to get their freedom back often helps people to overcome those situations.

There are also a lot of people who are not free without being physically imprisoned, for instance, people with serious or even terminal diseases, or the physically or mentally disabled. They are not put behind bars or tied with cords, however, they are unable to live normal lives, their illnesses affect their personal lives and spiritual worlds. Other examples of imprisonment without bars are narcotic and alcohol addictions. For many this is the reason they lose their friends and families, the respect of society, and self respect, however, a lot of those people are determined to get it all back by striving to cope with their dependence. I also see a form of imprisonment in the routines some people have. Some people get up, go to work, go home, watch television, go to bed and start over again. A lot of us are confined by our economic class. I can also see unhappy relationships and depression as other forms of imprisonment.

The interesting thing I noticed is that a lot of physically imprisoned people have suffered from drug or alcohol addiction, mental health problems or unhappy relationships, and it was those forms of life imprisonment that eventually led them to commit acts that broke the law