Freedom is coveted, demanded, dreamt of, fought for, and yet elusive in practice and definition. The discrepancy in understanding what freedom is and entails is at the centre of our difficult times, or at one of the centres.
Almost on a daily basis we confront a new test case and reminder of the thorny thicket which we have to brave. Not with machetes like in Africa, not with guns and coups like in Egypt and Syria, but hopefully with exhausting patience and tolerance.
One day we have Aum Neko, the transgender student whose aggressive style of campaigning has earned her bricks and flowers (more of the former it seems).
Freedom to her is for a Thammasat University lecturer to stop demanding students wear uniform, which to her is a symbol of institutional oppression. Freedom to her is to get up in a swimsuit and pose for photos in the university canteen. Freedom to her entitles her to design sexually provocative anti-uniform posters and to put them up in the campus. Freedom to her is also a freedom to offend.
Let's hear Gandhi himself: "Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote the freedom to err". Many people, chiefly her university rector, surely disagree.
Then we have Baitoey R Siam. Freedom to the sexy singer is the freedom to perform or have dinner with whoever pays her, in this case with ex-PM Thaksin Shinawatra, who reportedly paid her with cash and handbags.
Just like Beyonce enjoying her professional liberty to perform for Gaddafi and testing the acceptance of the American public (she passed), Baitoey, as a popular entertainer, puts up a test for her fans - and male oglers - whether they would still adore her now that she's got a paycheck from someone they might despise. She has the freedom to accept any contract - and also the freedom to decline. She chose the former, and now she's found herself on the front page of every Thai-language newspaper and testing the limits of public approval.
Then we have those whose definition of freedom is more physical and territorial than psychological. Some in the deep South demand freedom of the most sensitive kind, and the military's response is based on a belief in freedom as defined by another set of rules, or another history.
Along the way, the villagers caught in the crossfire demand the freedom - the simple freedom, though freedom is rarely simple - to move about freely day or night without fear just like people do in the rest of the country. That's the most dismal non-freedom, because amid the flurry of outcry and discourses, the absence of this most basic kind of freedom is buried underneath the noisier and more ideological ones.
All these test cases bring frustration, but necessary frustration. Even if begrudgingly, we have to plunge into them. This transitional period we're going through will be long, and it's best to steel ourselves for many more tests that I'm sure will come, some of them annoying, others unnerving, the rest frightening.
The argument that freedom comes with limits and responsibilties is correct, but even the lines demarcating limits - whose limits anyway? - represent another round of battles that we have to confront, again with sanity and tolerance.
Take this for an obvious example. Upset with Aum Neko's belligerence, a TV producer has sued her for lese majeste; based on an interview with Aum that the plaintiff claims to have recorded a few months back, which has nothing to do with the current uniform racket.
This trick to define (and defend) the line of freedom is ugly; even if you disagree with something, or everything, that Ms Aum has said or done, we're reminded once again that this controversial law is also a big test in our quest to acommodate the multiple meanings of freedom, though this is particular one implicates harsher results, such as a jail term.
We haven't forgotten Somyot Prueksakasemsuk either; again, even if we disagree with what he published, we know in our heart of hearts that being jailed 11 years for exercising what he believes to be a basic freedom is disturbing and unfair.
Meanwhile, Baitoey is busy defending her freedom to entertain whoever she wants. And regarding the South, the latest test case is when Gen Prayuth Chan-ocha yesterday said in his typical strongman thunder: the Malay-Thai down there have the freedom to speak their language, but "as long as they're in Thailand, they have to speak Thai" as the official tongue.
Freedom has many shades and implications, but obviously some people are hell-bent on twisting arms and monopolising the term. Patience, for many more such tests will come.
Kong Rithdee is deputy Life editor, Bangkok Post.