From Beijing to San Francisco: What Is Freedom?
Born in Beijing and after spending five years in San Francisco, my life has changed. I learned what is freedom.
I believe in greatness, extraordinary things can happen. Every time I make art, I see my potential as well as my constraints. Constraints are mostly coming from my cultural background. Many of my creativity constraints were coming from my childhood education in China, where self-expression was not encouraged and individual moral codes were defined by hierarchical relations. My parents always put me in their safety boxes and listed me numerous things I was not supposed to do. In my high school politics class, my teacher barely talked about his own opinions about the government and parts of the history that is outside our textbooks. Sometimes he did share his opinions, and he would regret and told us to not tell anyone else. I think Freud is right about something, about how much parental voice and childhood education can control our unconscious decisions even as adults.
In order to make greater things to happen, I must to first conquer my internal obstacles.
I ask myself questions. In San Francisco, I asked: When is it appropriate to confront with authorities? Does doing drugs and having promiscuous sex make you a bad person? If I had done those things would you think differently of me?
Every time when I make a choice, I think about this: Why am I making this choice? For me, freedom is the collection of right choices. The right choices are the choices that I make for myself and not for anyone else. It doesn’t make me be a selfish person. I spend most of my mental energy to think about “What is good?”
Freedom isn’t as hard as you think it is. It only requires discipline, bravery, intelligence, and unwavering determination.
