Deutschland, Deutschland über alles...or...

...was it Bavaria?
Anyways, i'm off to Germany tomorrow, to Munich to be more exact. Gonna meet up with a "friend" from CS(couchsurfing.org), gotta admit that i'm a bit nervous, one should never meet up with people you have only talked to via the internet, never know if one might turn up murdered or become part of someones fruitsalad.
But, it'll be loads of fun as well. The plan is to hitchhike to Salzburg, Austria and then southwards to Venice, Italy as the destination and then back up to Munich again within 9 days when it's time for me to return to Norway again. The alps are mine! Sound of music? You bet!
Can't wait til I have to get up 4 o clock in the morning tomorrow, catch a bus at 5.15 and then hopefully arrive in Lillestrøm around 6 to take a train at 6.11 to Oslo where I have to take the bus to Rygge airport at 6.40. Am I stressed about it? You bet!

Freedom.

Today's subject is "freedom". A word that is so misused and misunderstood that it almost hurts saying it. Millions have died for it, in wars, in concentration camps, in torture chambers, in dark alleys, in bedrooms etc.
And what is freedom? Does it have anything to do with democracy, or anarchism? Or any other political ideology? In my opinion, no. Do I have the right answer for what it really is? No. I can only give you my own opinion about what freedom is. The ideas about freedom are as different as there are humans on this planet. If we are to take freedom literally, the true sense of the word, we have to lock ourselves in a dark room, without ligt, without sound and sit there, unaffected by anyone or anything, that would be true freedom. But then again one would become affected by the darkness and silence and probably go mad attempting it.
Then what is freedom for me then? In my opinion: It is bliss, to be content with one's life. To wake up every morning not being weary of life, not wanting to die, not sighing the first thing you do with tears in the corner of your eyes not wanting to go on. Freedom for me is to have complete control of one's own situation, one's own life, being able to control the amount of information that flows into our heads everyday. To travel everywhere and whenever one feels like it. To not be hindered by work, by obligations, by gossip, by a broken heart, by alcohol and tobacco.
You cannot find freedom at the bottom of a bottle, nor is it explained on your payslip, nor is it televisionised and it cannot be bought on sale in a supermarket. Nor can you gain freedom for a society with a revolution, not in this day and age. All one can to today is to set oneself free and hopefully inspire others to follow. Freedom is deep inside all of us, we just have to find it and figure out what it means to us. And what we will do with it.
We were all born free and we can all die free as well.
Freedom is ours for the taking.

Life?

What is life really? I mean, can we truly define it? What is our purpose, the meaning of life? 42? Think about it, some people, a lot of people seems to be content with the fact that their lives is a never-ending circle containing work, consuming, breeding and then the inevitable death. Is that really life, or living? Working 5 days a week to earn your right in our so called society, working to be able to pay a rent we sometimes barely can afford, working 5 days a week to be able to feed ourselves and our families, to pay our bills wich comes from everything we need in life. Or do we? Do we really need all that? Do we really need video/computergames, TV, video, other high-tech machinery, magazines, TV shows that tell us what to do, what to think, how to behave, how to live our lives, perfume, beauty shops, cellphones, movies, CD's, things things things and things? What is that? Is that safety? Is it safety to not being able to sleep due to the fact that you might loose your job, is it safety that you can't sleep due to the fact that you can't afford to pay neither your bills nor your rent? Is it safety that we spend thousands upon thousands of euro/dollars[insert any currency here] on things we don't need? Is it safety knowing that you will only be able to take a vacation 4-5 weeks a year? Is it safety knowing that you will probably have to be working for the rest of your life(wich in this case means until you're about 65+- years old, not that life is necesserily ending at that age, but our youthful strength has surely vanished by then).
Is this what life is about? Oh yes, I almost forgot, we've got all the pubs around us, the beers in the supermarkets, the liquorstores so we can celebrate the upcoming weekend, how can we ever become miserable in a society like this?

Seriously, think about it.

Ever had something you wanted to do with your life? Ever had a dream that still lingers on from childhood? You feel tired all the time, no energy or lust for life? You have an "itch" that refuses to go away, you know you can remedy it somehow, but not exactly sure how? You have a constant feeling that all this is wrong, but you can't really place your thumb on it either? That there is something else out there, that a different life is possible? But you can't go, you can't do something about it? You have a job, a partner, a band, you got friends that would question you, you have somewhere to "belong" and just can't go or do something about that "itch", right? There is always an excuse to linger on. Always.

Why am I talking about this? Well i'm sick of this. And have been for quite some years. But I lingered on, I stayed, I tried to drink it away, tried to conform and adjust to my surroundings thinking that it would go away. Sometimes it did, could always find something that could make me smile for a week or two, sometimes even months. But I always fell back, became severely depressed, developed angst, stopped caring about anything. But something happened to me, I had a mental breakdown in december 2009 and thought to myself "Shit, it's either death or change from here" and I chose to change, to live.
And what kind of change am I talking about? What is this? Life?
We're not meant to live like this, in cities where we work our whole lives away, drinking our "free time" away believing that we are truly free, wich we are not. We are as caged as the animals in laboratories, only that our cages are mental. We accept that this is life. We conform. And then ofcourse we have all these subcultural groups claiming to be different and one is more free and independent than the other, only problem is, all these subcultural groups follow the patterns of "our" society. Why? Because they're all about blending in, having a common opinion, if you can't adjust to the main thinking of the group, then you do not fit in. And we believe that our only remedy to all of that working is to drink it all away during the weekends, sometimes even during the week(we're free, right?). And ofcourse we have fun when we do it, when we party, when we go to concerts, when we go to pubs, when we get laid for the night not even remembering who it was with in the first place(nor do we care right? "Gotta get laid!!!"), but is it really freedom?

Is it really life?

I've had enough of this. For me this isn't a life, it's a bloody joke. We're not meant to live like this. We have a whole world to explore, to play in, we have feelings to express, oceans to cross, mountains to climb, we have skills to be shared, we have forests to wander, earth to walk on. We have everything we need around us, but we don't see it.
But it's never too late to wake up, to take a chance, to really make your life worth living.
And me?
I'm getting the hell out of here.