The Freedom of Faith

Faith Connors Quick Navigation Links:
Character Breakdown: Faith Connors
The Faith Workout
The Skills of Faith
The Freedom of Faith

Faith lives in a dystopian future of sorts, but not your normal dystopian future.  Faith’s city is, on the surface, clean, crime-free, and beautiful.  A utopia of sorts.  The oppressive regime of the City is Orwellian in its constructs, policing people to extreme levels through surveillance and limitation of personal freedoms.  Faith’s parents believed strongly in resisting this totalitarian rule, and their attitude seems to rub off on her.

Faith leaves home at sixteen, not able to handle her father’s depression and alcoholism after her father dies.  She seeks freedom, and with the Runners, she finds it.  The artistry and symbol of limitations that is her Freerunning help her to find the open sky she was searching for.

However, Freedom is expensive in the City, and the cost is steep.  Faith’s life is that of a constant survival struggle.  She’s hunted by police, has gone hungry, stolen just to keep herself alive, and fights every day to maintain her freedom.  She’s proud of her survival abilities, but Celeste points out that sometimes just survival is overrated, you have to live a little, too.

Additionally, Faith falls out of touch with her family, including her sister, Kate.  Kate chose the exact opposite life of Faith, going on to become a police officer.  Eventually framed for the death of Robert Pope, Kate runs afoul of the city she was trying to protect.  In order to save her sister, Faith must risk the thing she values most – her freedom.

Freedom is a funny thing in life.  Everyone desires it in some form or another.  The freedom to live how you want, marry who you want, do what you want – freedom factors into many things in life as an unconscious or conscious desire.  People want freedom from debt, from their job, from their government, from oppression…many things.

Freedom is expensive, however.  This isn’t a silly “freedom isn’t free” post, but rather an appeal to self-examination.  Do you desire freedom from something?  What would the cost be to obtain this freedom?  Currently, I’m looking for freedom from my regular nine-to-five job.  I want to write for a living, and I’m working towards it with every post I make!  But this comes at a cost.

The first cost is my own personal free time.  Of course, the idea is that eventually when I’m self employed, I have more of that than I do commuting to my job an hour each way, to work an eight hour shift with a one hour lunch break (eleven hours total every day, holy crap!).  So the idea is to have more free time, but right now I use tons of personal time for furthering the blog.  Recording videos on the weekends, writing after hours when I don’t have time to squeeze in a post at my day job, and reading and responding to reader email (which I freaking love, by the way, keep them coming!).

The second cost, and perhaps more hidden, is that I have to make the transition to the land of being my own boss.  It’s romanticized a lot by media, and the people who desire to live their own life and work their own hours.  But the fact is, I have to crack down on my own freedoms a lot to do it.  I play less games right now, read fewer books, and spend less time working out or pursuing other forms of recreation.  Additionally, I have to learn how to shoulder the responsibilities of taxes, getting my own health care laid out, etc.  This takes away some freedom in that I’m no longer free to stop worrying about my job after five o’clock.  When you work for yourself, it’s literally a full time concern.

The bottom line is that freedom is wonderful, and I’m definitely still pursuing it (as you should, too!).  But never forget that all freedoms have costs.  Before you run for that open door, think about what you’ll need to sacrifice for it.  Everything has two sides, like the edge of a mirror…

That’s it for our time with Faith!  Thanks for reading!  Mirror’s Edge is one of my favorite games of all time, and word is they’re working on a sequel, which I’m TOTALLY PSYCHED FOR.  Please don’t forget to like the blog on Facebook, and follow on Twitter and Tumblr.  While you’re at it, if you enjoyed this post, please share/retweet it to your friends!  Next post is Sunday night, with our usual fitness journey update! Until then, remember to live boldly, change the world, and continue to be awesome.

Dan “DaRatmastah” Wallace