Let Us Walk Arm in Arm
September 10th, 2006
I was seven or eight years old and the words above the water fountains in the old courthouse in my hometown in Arkansas read – ‘White’s Only’ – ‘Colored’s Only’.
I had just gotten my first taste of what it meant to take another persons freedom. At that young age I didn’t understand, yet I knew it made me uncomfortable and I knew it wasn’t right.
I still do not understand man’s inhumanity to man. How someone can suppress the freedom of another person. How a persons color, nationality, religion or political affiliation can cause another person so much discomfort they would react in any possible way to suppress someone’s right to be free is beyond my comprehension.
We cannot let one person or one country control the way in which we express our freedom. How can we sit still and let one man and one nation demand that the rest of the world walk lock step with the ideas of the one at the cost of freedom to many. One person’s freedom just might be another person’s nightmare. Let us walk arm in arm and declare that all men and women, all children and all nations are free to experience and express freedom in the way they choose.
To me freedom means to be unshackled from anything that keeps us from being less than we were meant to be. To be unshackled from tyranny, from oppression and from any politically imposed constraints that would suppress our inherent right to be free from want or fear. Liberation from being confined, enslaved, captured, or imprisoned. And ultimately liberation of heart, mind and soul so that we might free ourselves from our own self imposed constraints.
by Ron Welling
Gladewater, Texas USA
Excellent piece, Ron. I found the line “One person’s freedom just might be another person’s nightmare,” especially provocative, considering the myriad of ways we believe other countries want our type of freedom — in this case, our high consumptive lifestyles.
Even within my own borders their are First Nations tribes that are told they are missing out on the benefits. David Suzuki commented on his own visit to a First Nations’ dinner, how their Chief apologized for being “poor” even while they were rich in local food and community spirit. There’s a lot we could learn from other peoples’ definitions of freedom.