Freedom
Thu Dec 28, 2006 at 02:18:37 PM PDT
free·dom [free-duhm] –noun: the condition of being free; the power to act or speak or think without externally imposed restraints.
I was talking to my boyfriend in the car on the way back to DC from his house in Baltimore on Tuesday night, and he commented that he was amazed that I was always able to remain optimistic about the bigger picture and see the potential for good in the world around me. The conversation that started took me back to a sermon I once heard at All Souls Unitarian Church in Washington, DC, given by Rev. Shana Lynngood.
I've found my thoughts returning to that sermon many times since I heard it, and I remember it as one of the most empowering sermons I've heard in my years attending Unitarian churches. It led me to ask what is freedom really, and how can I best use it? How do we ensure that we don't lose it? What can it do for the world?
I know a great many on this site have pondered those questions, and of them, a few here have acted boldly in response. Our own Mike Stark, shouting truth into the insanity of right wing radio. S. R. Sidarth showing that nobody, not even a United States Senator has a right to demean a man for his heritage without paying stark consequences. Or the dozens who sat down in front of the White House, just blocks from where I sit writing this essay, or crowded through the DC Metro system to protest an unjust immigration bill.
"...the power to act or speak or think without externally imposed restraints."
It is most often the case that those externally imposed restraints are not physical in nature. Freedom isn't taken merely by arresting people. Nor is it simply by censoring them. Even in death, they may not necessarily take away your ability to affect the world around you.
While in Baltimore with my boyfriend, we found ourselves at the Peabody Institute, viewing an exhibit about H. L. Mencken. So, it should be quite fitting that as I searched for appropriate quotations to use in this essay, I found this particularly apt one from him:
"I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave."
H. L. Mencken
The great destroyer of freedom, rather, is not any one man, or any particular government, or any set of policies and procedures, but a single concept, that most debilitating emotion: Fear.
"The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe."
H. L. Mencken
We move through this world every day given so many reasons to be afraid. Every time the PA system in the metro blares out, "See it. Say it. The Metro Transit Police would like to remind you that if you see something out of the ordinary that you say something," you're reminded that this world is a dangerous place. Your television screams news of murders and robberies every night on the eleven o'clock news. The morning paper is filled with headlines and vivid photographs of disasters around the world, natural and otherwise. And when something did happen to us, that fateful day five and a half years ago, how did we react? How are we still affected by it today?
"Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you."
Jean-Paul Sartre
Rather than using the horror of that day to remind us how much work remains to be done in the world and how much of its current chaos we personally own through our own irresponsibility, we turned against it, seeing enemies in every corner. We struck out at ghosts that were never there and succeeded only in killing our own children and alienating still more of the world. And we gave up more of our own freedom. Willingly.
There is no leader in the world, even given all the power in the world, who could possibly make us safe. There is no such thing as safety. Only when we realize that, understand it, and live it do we become free. We say to the world, "Scare me all you want, I will not be moved. I will still try to make the world a better place."
Every once in a while, a leader comes along who speaks to that concept so eloquently, so timely, that he or she ignites an entire generation with hope for the future and empowers them reclaim their freedom. I think we as humans naturally long for that. The Bobby Kennedy's and Martin Luther King Jr.'s and Barack Obama's of the world are not successful because they see the world substantially different from anyone else. I believe it is because they have learned how, within themselves, to turn hope and optimism into a mantra to live by and freed themselves in some small way from oppressive fear, and have somehow learned to articulate that freedom in ways that inspire and enable us to do the same.
"And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
Marianne Williamson
The people who do that do not change the world by the own greatness, but by liberating the greatness inherent in all of us. They all understand, like Jefferson, that people are by their nature good, held back from that goodness by fear and the fight for survival, and that, if properly empowered, they will naturally find ways to achieve that good already in them.
As I've written before, my overriding philosophy is that I believe I am obligated to hand this world off to the next generation in better shape than I found it. I believe that best way to do that is to empower the people around you. Find ways to make the a little bit healthier, a little bit happier, a little bit freer. Free them all to improve the world in their own small ways. Always encourage creativity. Never stifle curiosity. Make people believe in themselves and their own innate abilities. Encourage them to pass that light on to those around them.
Therein lies my optimism. I've seen it happen. I've shown people who lacked the right to vote that they still have a voice. I've helped people who believed their government had left them behind see how they could help make it stand up and take notice. I hope that those people have passed it on and affected others around them in a positive way, like Robert F. Kennedy's tiny ripples of hope. That's how I define freedom: the ability to help shape the future to grow beyond the fears of the present.
I will always have many questions about the world around me and why things are they way they are, but I know there is only one place to look to find the answers. In the future lies hope, in hope, freedom.
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