the suspicion of binaries [1]*

either freedom or love in the pursuit of happiness

in our american society, two concepts appear crucial to the pursuit and attainment of happiness: love and freedom**

although these two ideas are often portrayed in popular culture in a way that may make us not take them as seriously (take chick flics and flagrant consumerism), they nevertheless resonate deeply within us. when we try to imagine a happy life- we imagine ourselves with someone that we have fallen in love with, we imagine ourselves with the freedom to do whatever we want (implying that we can choose to do what will make us happy).

yet, these two pillars of happiness are conceived as being mutually exclusive. if you love, you are in a binding commitment to another and you are not free. if you are free, you will not experience the joys of a life committed to another. (take even the ending of the incredibly bad movie Catwoman, where Catwoman finds love and freedom mutually exclusive. she either stays with the man she loves and experiences confinement or can opt to leave him and experience freedom.)

so it seems, that under this system, we can never have happiness in its completion- since experiencing love precludes us from experiencing freedom, and experiencing freedom precludes us from experiencing the fullness of love.

however, Jesus suggests otherwise. for Him, what is true freedom is precisely the opposite of what we consider freedom. for us, freedom is the absolute ability for us to choose how to live our lives, to choose to how to express ourselves and how to go about pursuing things that will make us happy or give us pleasure.

yet for Jesus, true freedom is not found in this pursuit of things for the self, but rather true freedom is found in being able to escape the self, to escape the selfish desires that more often confine us than liberate us. it is only in love that true freedom is found. it is only in loving others, that we can cast off the chains of selfish wants and desires and needs, and discover a refreshing, liberating and delightful freedom in commiting ourselves to the well being of another (yet this is also a freedom that suffers, since if we love, we make ourselves vulnerable to hurt, and to hurt for).***

but unless we love, we only experience freedom in a lesser, perverse form. a freedom that allows us to do whatever we want, without any sense of purpose attached to it, except perhaps the satisfaction of our own desires. and if that is the ultimate purpose of our lives, then i must say it is rather a dismal and despairing one. one that gives me little hope of true happiness.

* i guess anyone who studies postmodernism, or postcolonialism, must be suspicious of them. and yes, this should ring red siren lights becuase the series on 'the great divide' is dealing precisely with some almost-binaries. be suspicious! perhaps not all of them are so simply either/or.
**though recently, the latter, freedom, has been priviledged over the former as the plethora of failed and unhappy marriages seems to have torn down any idealized notions of love. if love does bring us happiness, then we don't seem to be very good at doing it. freedom seems a little easier.
*** i mean love in the agape sense (not just romantic)- a self sacrificial love, not the kind of feeling that we often mistake for love- which is the outpouring of affection and service in the hope of being loved in return.