STEPS

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR Freedom

Freedom. I've searched for it one way or another my entire life; sought in in places, in people, in every current circumstance. Something inside me rebelling when I've determined it denied, eroded, sub-divided. Stupid, illogical things offered up in protest: Neglecting to renew my licence, my registration, my Insurance... Driving around with a 'fuck you' attitude towards any semblance of authority, any additional restriction tightening the noose - further inhibiting my breathing. Unacceptable to me, needing permission for almost everything - this permission a privilege to be paid for.

How is one ever free if bound by these conditions? Everything an institution, a contract, a responsibility. Bartering... Men in power suits expounding why I need this protection, purporting to defend my rights and my safety by tying me down to forms and licences and permits. All the while inciting fear, newer, bigger threats presented everywhere, creating the necessity for identification cards and conditions - for my personal safety, my assured protection.

I detest this current system, unable to find an equitable way to function within it; often speaking to my sons about other times. When we weren't monitored, surveilled, when we could disappear for hours at a time as children, no one knowing where we were. Not programmed to fear the worst - life an adventure, never a threat. No phones, no social media, no plastic cards recording every sale. No cameras mapping our location and following our movements from stores and streets and mobile towers.

They struggle to understand this other world. I detect a degree of fear. Born into the current system, they raise questions:

"But mum, what if something happened to you, when you were away from home? ... When you skipped school to walk the city streets, or spent the afternoon at the beach. Who would know? Didn't your parents worry? You couldn't contact them!"

"Exactly!" I tell them. "These are today's questions, rising from current and mostly manufactured dangers. They didn't exist then!"

News feeds weren't full of terror, terror. The word itself unspoken, unrelated to the process of living. Connectivity founded in conversations, face to face interactions. Everything sorted in the physical, not bandied about in social media. Not hiding behind faceless, cowardly keyboards.

There was a downside to living on the coast, similar I guess to every other small community these days of instant connectivity: knowing everything. There was a dichotomy, the people you met and spoke to daily, and these same people in front of keyboards or on mobile devices, updating news as they happened. A car accident? Immediately posts and news threads appeared, often before the police or ambulance had arrived. A domestic incident incited verbal protestations, vile accusations, a rushing tide against the alleged abuser. A boating accident or a drowning drew everyone to the scene; news spreading faster over social media than from any 'formal' media announcements.

Anything that 'broke' the everyday pattern of living was discussed, deliberated and judged, as though the people themselves were 'the authorities'. Lives and reputations were at times brutally cut down, the furore igniting many other smaller fires, inciting mass indignation and protest. The sweet lady walking her dog along the beach turning into a screaming, irate thing online, spouting rumours and half-truths, these built on by others, the initial incident burgeoning as more joined in, becoming in the end something larger than life.

I have never properly understood this phenomenon. Perhaps it is the result of ennui, a boredom borne of unwavering continuity, the pattern of living so set that any small deviation is an opportunity to vent, to release the pressure of 'nothing ever really happening'.

I speak of the freedoms enjoyed there, yet these too were conditional: the fabric of the community was not to be compromised. Anything new eyed with suspicion. Visitors were welcomed as 'consumers' and 'contributors' to the local economy but also abhorred; detested for intruding, for messing with this fabric with their 'foreign' ways - even if this foreignness was only a hundred kilometres away.