We all have choices that we make in life. We choose to be reading this for example.

It’s in our own interest to make the right choice in any given time. Freedom allows us to make these choices.

Freedom gives opportunity, and its restriction cuts down our opportunities.

Little wonder then that we hold freedom high on our list of values.

But freedom also brings the need for responsibility, and it brings the question: what is free to do what?

The trouble is that much of the psyche is unknown to the average person.

There are drives and different desires that crave to be fulfilled. Many of these influence each one beyond their understanding or knowledge.

These which I refer to are animal drives, which put us in the ‘dog-eat-dog’ world of nature’s survival of the fittest.

Freedom can come to mean unrestricted behaviour, which arises from the animal drives.

But nature has its laws - sometimes brutal ones too, as each animal struggles for survival, others lose, ultimately every individual creature loses nature’s brutal battle.

A bigger animal comes to eat it, injury strikes or old age, natural disasters take its life away.

The animals have their freedoms, which vary from one to another: some are in zoos, others in the wild, others are pets, but all are restricted according to their type - an animal will always be an animal, no matter how its life is.

It cannot rise to be spiritual, and that’s a fundamental difference between us and them, between us and animals.

We potentially have the freedom not to live an animalistic life.

For many of us, that’s a choice we can make.