Why We Do What We Do

Sorry no pun here. Maybe I'm slacking? I'll be sure to throw in a bad joke at the end of this entry to make up for it though. I was going to call it something like ¨Not Sure if Europe to Reading this Entry¨, but figured that's not a good way to get people reading my posts.
So this entry here isn't really much about what I've been up to in the past couple of days - I will get to that eventually - it is more a contemplative/philosophical entry.
Why do we do what we do? Why do we get up in the morning? Why do we adapt to certain hobbies? Why does one person's opinion vary from the next? Can I answer these questions? Well I sure as hell can try! And that is not to say that I think my attempt at the answers to these theses is any more adequate, or universally true. I believe that we all hold our own universal truths, and this allows for some very interesting room for growth and experience/opinion sharing.. not to mention a ton of problems as well, but I'll leave that subject for another time.
Why do we get up in the morning? One may argue that we do so for the sake of survival. We set our alarms at 6:00AM (or 5:50 to allow one punch of the snooze button) just so we can go to our daily grinds. Whether it be at the office, at the track field, at the grocery store, at the hospital, or at the construction zone. (I realize this is a very first world point of view, but that is the one I grew up with so I think it is only appropriate that I write about the things I am more familiar with). We make our best attempts at staying on top of it all, all the bills, all the issues (physically and/or mentally), all the health concerns, all the family matters, all the social matters, all the news, all the social media, all the new releases, all things that are ¨hip¨. Humans can put so much effort into trying to be effortless. But why? Sure having some stability can be reassuring, however the rate at which some people are attempting to accomplish this ¨goal¨, is it really worth the sweat and tears?
I may be posing too many questions at this point, surely more than I can attempt to tackle. Yet I think questions are a flavourful way of making an individual assess things and to reach a level he/she wouldn't have reached yet without slowing down to contemplate such said questions.
Where was I? (I sure do get side-tracked at times). Why do we do the things we do? We seek stability financially, socially, physically and mentally.. yes? If we can agree on that (which is possibly a bit of a stretch) why do we vary on the things we ACTUALLY do? What do we do on our days off? Why do certain individuals get more time off than others? There are many aspects to that, however the latter is not the question I will attempt to answer here, and I'm sure some of us have a clear idea of why people tend to have more freedoms than others. Freedom? What a stupid concept really. Many think of freedom as such a linear concept. ¨Oh I don't need to work 40 hours at a minimum wage job, I'm more free than my neighbour who is hardly getting by¨. ¨Oh I've got my mortgage paid off, I sure am a more free human being now¨. ¨I've seen more of the world, I've traveled and seen remote villages I had never even previously heard of. I sure love this freedom thing¨. ¨I love the fact I speak 4 langauges, it sure gives me more freedom when traveling¨..I could go on.. Having certain privileges and being ¨free¨ are, in my opinion, two entirely separate things. How can we rate freedom? Is a butler who takes pride in his work and the people he works for any less free than a multimillionaire with too much time/money and nothing/nobody to spend it on/with? Is a multi-linguist with nobody to talk to any more free than a mute with life stories to tell? (Re-reading over this, I just want to clarify that it seems there is a common theme in my piece here and that is that it seems like I am condescending to people with money and/or an education.. don't get me wrong I am not biased, just simply trying to make a point). No. It is not the conditions/environment that an individual lives in which determines his/her ability to feel free, it is her/his ability to adapt to what's around and to make the most of it which determines his/her feeling of freedom (too bold a statement? - write your own damn blog!)
I often have thought that humans as a whole easily get accustomed to what they have and grow tired of things very rapidly. More is never enough. With that in mind, isn't freedom all relative? If humans as a whole are never satisfied with what is presented, with a strive for always wanting a little bit more, then freedom is caged in a cell with the key tossed into hell.
We are as free as we want to be. We cannot continue to let outer sources determine our rights and define who we are supposed to be. What have I learned during my travels? I am my best friend and my worst enemy. I set the boundaries of my own experience and my own life. It isn't about reaching my goal and sacrificing what's important to me along the way by giving up the freedoms I privileged with. Its about holding on to these freedoms as I continue to live the life I was given. The freedom of making choices, the freedom of learning from adaptation, the freedom of friendships, the freedom of thinking, the freedom of speech, the freedom of experience, the freedom of experimentation, the freedom of success, the freedom of failure, the freedom of love, the freedom of hate.
So why do we have different opinions and why do we have different hobbies? This seems simply obvious to me. Every single person on this planet is different. We all have different histories, different emotions, different mental and physical states of mind. How one individual will react to a certain piece of music or piece of land for example will always be different than everybody else - regardless of how similar the circumstances may be. I think the environment an individual grows up in and/or resides in will determine how he/she reacts to certain situations. Same goes for the way an individual is raised, his/her history, good/bad memories, education, friends, family, lessons, experiences and so on. That, in my uneducated opinion, answers that question.
Sure the world has problems, and fundamentally I realize that human rights in some places are in clear violation and certain people overall have it easier than others. I am simply trying to make the best of the things we can hold on to, and to focus on the positives while respecting the fact that there are negatives as well.
Sorry for the rant. Hope I don't sound too unintelligent? I may re-read this tomorrow and wonder what was in those few beers I had earlier tonight. But for the meantime there you go!
And now for the bad joke I promised:
What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question?