Every year when Passover rolls around, my mind drifts to two things: the impending doom that allergy season will wreak upon me, and the daunting prospect of eating unleavened bread for the majority of the week.

This year, however, the Jewish Light Teen Page staff brought up the discussion of personal freedom and slavery, and just what it means to adolescents to exercise these rights in the 21st century. It triggered an internal dialogue that I found to be remarkably complex for a second semester high school senior with one foot out the door on the way to college, It also left me asking myself: just how free am I?

I am initially inclined to say that yes, I am indeed free. I walk, talk and think without fear that my age, religion or race will be in any way restrained by my country or community. Sure, I can’t vote yet, drink alcohol or rent a car, but those are legal shackles that will fall off in a matter of years. I still bear the ability to think freely and express my ideas in a community that respects that.

While some of that is attributed to the tenants that our country is founded on, I accredit it to the environments that my parents immersed me in. I grew up in a household that encouraged me to establish my own voice, and challenge what I thought was wrong. Even more so, I have always attended schools and a synagogue that value my opinions, even if they coincide with an unpopular belief or unorthodox thought process.

Upon further reflection, the idea that I may indeed be “enslaved” to the quintessential American path holds some weight. In many American suburbs, particularly the one I live in, the expectation is that teenagers will make their way through high school, enroll in the most selective college that will take them, eventually go on to get a degree in business, medicine or law and return home to settle into the professional life they have been groomed for the past 12 or more years. There is a premium placed on success, and while it’s great that most teenagers are striving to achieve that, it would seem that there is only one path highlighted.

As rigid as that path seems to be, I would argue that the bends and bumps on each individual’s road represent the freedoms that each of us possess. College is, primarily, a springboard into some sort of profession. But I like to see it as a toy box, filled to the brim with academic and social opportunities that I can sample and taste, finding the right collection to later suit me. I don’t just want to use college as some sort of mechanical prerequisite, but rather as a dressing room where I try on all the possibilities that I have the privilege to enjoy. There is a sort of unique freedom within that; it is within each of us to try to isolate the things that drive us.

I do believe that most teenagers are endowed with a type of personal freedom. Sure, you can put on your blinders and become “enslaved” to the typical American professional path, but I also believe you can charge down that same path and freely explore every nook and cranny that it contains. The freedom is there, it’s just up to us to snatch it.