Where Choice Lives When Freedom Is Taken Away

To challenge our usual understanding of choice, let’s consider a circumstance that seems to take it away almost entirely: imprisonment.

In its literal form, imprisonment means life behind bars. But versions of imprisonment appear far more often — and far more quietly — in everyday life.

Being homebound with a newborn, our world suddenly reduced to feeding schedules and exhaustion.

Staying in a job that drains us, because leaving feels too risky or irresponsible.

Wanting time for ourselves, for rest or creativity, but feeling trapped by duties, expectations, or roles we cannot step out of.

When movement is restricted, when time no longer feels like our own, when basic choices or rights seem narrowed or removed — what happens to freedom then?

This is where rethinking what freedom means can shift one’s outlook. Even when we don’t have the freedom to act as we wish, we may still be free to decide how we relate to what is happening.

We tend to associate choice with options — with flexibility, mobility, the ability to change circumstances. But when those are limited, choice reveals a different meaning: not what we do, but from where we do it.

Psychologically, this distinction is crucial.

Much of our suffering does not come from limitation alone, but from our relationship to it. We brace ourselves against our thoughts, our emotions, our frustration, our grief — trying to push them away, silence them, or tell ourselves we shouldn’t feel this way. In doing so, we often give these experiences more power, not less.

What if we were to see that choice begins when we stop fighting what is already present and start acknowledging it — accepting it. This does not mean approval or resignation. It means no longer spending our energy resisting reality. From that place, our actions can be guided by intention rather than reflex.

This may be why some people live outwardly free lives yet feel internally constrained — while others remain grounded even within severe limits. When inner experience is denied, hidden, or treated as a problem to be solved, it drives behavior from the shadows. When it is met openly, something shifts.

Choice returns.

In my work, this is the movement I support: from being driven by what we feel, to relating to it differently. Not to erase discomfort, but to carry it without losing direction. To recognize that even when circumstances cannot be changed, the stance we take toward them still matters.

Freedom, then, becomes the ability to remain present and intentional within the limits we are facing.

And sometimes, it is precisely when freedom feels most reduced that the meaning of choice becomes most visible.

What might change if we looked for freedom — not outside our limits, but within them?