you literally have free will

break the social contract you've signed in your head

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You literally have free will

My best friend’s makeup lives in a vintage treasure chest. I keep mine in a retro sewing box covered in pink and brown polka dots. For years and years we both had those clear plastic organisers that the 2016 YouTube community told us we needed: you know, the ones that got dusty and grubby and never properly fit the products we were being duped into buying?

This is not an essay about home organisation. It’s an essay about free will.

Break the social contract you’ve signed in your head

When I was younger I had a problem with authority. Not in the edgy rip-off-my-tshirt-sleeves-and-yell-fuck-the-system kind of way, but in the sense that I gave it out too freely because I thought everyone deserved it. At high school, I was scared of my teachers, and at university, none of my lecturers knew my name. I couldn’t look adults in the eye and I felt awkward and anxious talking to the parents of the children I’d babysit.

In my final year of university, I learned about the social contract. The way I learnt about it was boring - it was in a politics class and we were learning why democracy worked (lol.) The social contract, as I came to understand it, was the imaginary set of rules that most of us (anarchists aside) decided to abide by to keep the world working nicely. Like how we don’t scream in a library or steal another farmer’s sheep.

As I was sitting there listening (surprising for me), I started wondering why I signed this contract that included giving authority out so freely. It’s lucky I didn’t have this free will awakening during high school, because I now realise that teachers are literally just like us (and some of them weren’t even 10 years older than me), and that it’s adult’s first time living too. If I were to remove the fake authority I bestowed upon them they’d literally be just like me with a few extra years under their belt. I would have been insufferable had I realised this at 17.

There are other times in my life when I’d had glimpses of a free will awakening. When I’d catch myself wondering why we were only allowed to answer ‘yes’ or ‘here’ when teachers would take the register, or when, during my driving lessons, I’d think about how insane it is that we all decide to follow this one agreed upon set of rules in order to not kill each other on the streets (while I should have been navigating my way through one of our town’s 18 roundabouts.)

I’m not saying that you should realise you have free will and go grand-theft-auto on everyone, but it’s worth asking yourself some questions.

Some prompts for your own free will awakening:

• Why do only some foods get to be ‘breakfast’ foods?

• Why don’t we have playgrounds for adults?

• Why do we drink water out of boring glasses when we could be using cocktail ones?

• Why don’t we lie on the floor as adults (my friends and I do this and we call it ‘tummy time’ like babies get to have)

Free will is the antidote to the lack of control we feel in our lives

In Western cultures, we have a pretty established structure to life. Go to school, do some further study or go into a trade, buy a house, get a job, retire, die. This structure, while it used to work for people (not so much anymore), didn’t give us much agency. With this prescription of life came student loans, taxes, mortgages - a lot of ways to keep us feeling trapped, really. Sure, if we live in a functioning democracy and are old enough, we get a vote, but that’s not exactly exercising free will. That’s often picking the best of the worst.

Sometimes free will is loud and bold - like quitting a job that’s chewing you up or moving cities just because you want to. But sometimes, it’s small. Quiet. Little gentle rebellions. It’s choosing to eat dinner at 4pm. It’s leaving a party early. It’s just a whisper in your own direction in a world that’s trying to push you the way it has decided.

I know, I know, free will is a privilege

My whole life now is a reminder that I have free will, and I’m aware that it’s a privilege. My health lets me believe that any food can be a breakfast food, and my disposable income lets my antidepressants live in a woolly mushroom and my best friend’s rings live in a goblet.

I own a media company where nobody is breathing down my neck about what’s right or wrong or how things have always been done. I get to decide what deserves to be in my life, and who no longer serves me. Hell, my access to leisure time even allowed me to start having these thoughts as a kid, and my job now lets me write about them for you.

In the grand scheme of things, I’d love for all of us to break the social contract we’ve signed in our heads and exercise the free will we have, if we’re lucky enough to have it. But in the meantime, I’ll focus on finding a dollhouse to display my trinkets in, and signing my future social contracts with only glittery gel pens.

Luce xx