"Freedom" -- What Is It?

My entire family got into this huge argument earlier this evening. The source? My younger sisters.

The one in middle school went to the park with her friends across the street from her school right before her classes were supposed to start. This was around 7:30 in the morning, mind you. She lost her cell phone because it supposedly fell out of her sweater pocket. My guess is that it probably fell out of her pocket and someone found it... execept this person didn't return it. Hence, her very first cell phone (a very nice, very cute and very green Sony Ericson model) was stolen without her knowing. She's not getting a cell phone again for a looooooong time.

My other sister, the one in her junior year of high school, has a particular bad habit of not calling (because supposedly my mom never answers her calls) and staying out late until 8:30 or 9:00 PM on a SCHOOL NIGHT for the ENTIRE WEEK. The reason for this behavior, this sister claims, is that she wants to have more freedom.

Even though my mom already lets her go to school on her own and trusts her enough to come home at an appropriate time after hanging out with her friends.

But to this wart of a sister, it's not enough.

So the big question that kept coming up during the argument -- which I got dragged into because my parents are always using me as the standard of comparison (because I'm supposedly the good one). I'm only the good one because I'm trying to set an example to my sisters. I've screwed up lots of times before. I know what it's like to want to stay a little longer and just be cool and spend time with friends. Every teenager goes through that.

But that doesn't mean you should always do it. My sisters -- especially the brick-headed one in high school -- can't seem to fathom that. It's like they're defining themselves solely through their friendships. As if their sole reason for existing is their friends, and God forbid they be shunned.

I get it. I've been there. High school was always like that. The need to belong is strong, and can overpower, leading you to follow your impulses and damn all torpedoes because you just want to be cool and hang out after school like everyone else is doing. Because you don't want to be the odd one out, the "loser," the "freak" with the controlling and overprotective parents.

The problem is that when we're going through this stage, we can't see outside of ourselves. We may have theory of mind, but in the end we don't want to use it -- we don't want to see things from other people's perspectives because we don't consider them as relevant to our own point of view. And let's face it -- if we even dared peek into our parents' perspective of the situation, we'd run the risk of being wrong. So instead, we remain dogged, we rebel, we hold steadfastly to our own beliefs. We try to assert our own desire for independence. For freedom.

But when my mom and I asked what my sister meant by this "freedom" she oh so craved, she couldn't even tell us coherently at first. Perhaps it was partly due to her blubbering. However, it was plain to see that she really had no fucking clue what exactly this "freedom" was. Until finally, my sister said this [paraphrasing]:

"I want to be able to hang out with my friends. I want to be able to call you and tell you that I want to hang out with my friends, and I want you to be okay with it."

Um, that's what we've been trying to tell her all year! My parents aren't tyrants. We're actually pretty lucky that they don't slap us right on the spot if we screw up horribly. My mom is notorious for her neverending lectures and OCD tendencies, but that's about the worst it can get. How many times have my parents told my sister that she can totally hang out with her friends? I've lost count. Though, I'm pretty sure it was somewhere between 99 trillion and 99 zillion.

Of course, since my sister blew her chances by coming home unreasonably late every night for the entire school year, my mom has forbidden her from hanging out with her friends this summer. Which may seem harsh at first, but if you measure the countless hours my sister has already spent "gallivanting" (a favorite English word for Filipino parents when describing their kids' screwy behavior) with her friends during the year, it's totally fair.

She just has to learn not to define herself solely through her friends. She has to realize that some of them may not always be there for her. That some relationships have an expiration date, whatever those reasons may be, as a good friend of mine puts it. Very few friends will actually stay with you for the rest of your life, and these are the kinds of friends we should all be thankful for.

And she has to realize that freedom always has its limits.

To me, freedom is knowing your own limits and making those choices which will produce the best possible outcome for all those involved. Freedom is not go-crazy-because-your-parents-are-not-here-to-hound-you-for-being-a-total-imbecile.

Freedom is knowing yourself, and knowing that you have options. And that sometimes, making the right choices -- even if it's just to placate your mother from giving her neverending lecture -- can set you free.

Free from what?

Free of guilt. Free of moral repurcussions. Free of charge -- pun totally intended.