Freedom

Papers and tele today talk about a London doctor in her early fourties who went missing. Or missing...police suspect her parents are holding her against her will, forcing her into a marriage in Bangladesh. I feel for her, and it is awful but somehow it didn't quite surprise me so much as the convo I had with a Singaporean colleague last week. She is going home next month, after a year in London. A year of freedom. When she goes back to Sing, she will move back in with her parents, aged 29. There is just no alternative. If you are single, you live with your parents. Easy as that. So from total freedom in Europe she goes back to very little freedom, despite the good relationship she has with her parents. She told me one can't even legally buy a house in Singapore as a single under-35-yo. One of the things I most treasure in life, is my freedom. For the past 16 years, I have lived by myself. Made my own mistakes. Celebrated my own successes. Being increasingly less dependent from relo's and more so from friends that I turn to in times of trouble (and fun, of course). I feel for my colleague, and for the Bangladeshi doctor. How hard must it be having known so much freedom and losing it?