The Oxygen of Our Individuality
November 18th, 2006
Freedom has been a universal quest for as long as life exists on the planet.
Plants and animals alike long for freedom - grass grows through cracks of concrete and a hare will eat through its own paw to liberate itself from the trapper’s snare. Entire groups of people have risked their individual freedom for collective freedom throughout history. Still today many sacrifice their life for the sake of freedom for others, be it in Palestine, in Iraq or in Burma.
Freedom is essential to us because it is the oxygen of our individuality.
We can only become what we sense we can be if we are free to do so. The infinite possibilities of the mind unfold when our natural curiosity is allowed to explore those possibilities. If we are deprived of education, of health or of our human basic needs, if we are trapped in a jail cell or kept away from the source of free information, we lose the ability to become the most we could be.
And the world loses something precious in the process.
It is when we experience a deep understanding of this that we become freedom fighters. If we believe in the principles of peace and justice, we have the responsibility of becoming freedom fighters - there is no way out any more.
Of course it is not easy, because it requires threatening our personal comfort zone and accepting to confront the powers that be when we know they are lying. But it is in doing so that we experience the height of freedom. I have never felt so free as when I was locked up in a little jail cell in Saskatoon for 36 hours doing a hunger strike, after having been arrested for a civil desobedience action to denounce the effects of uranium mining on the residents of a small Metis village in Northern Saskatchewan.
My body was locked up but my spirit was totally liberated. There is no greater sense of fulfillment than committing to the cause of freedom, especially when it is not only for ourselves.
The world is experiencing quickening at many levels right now. An increasing number of people are choosing to become active in their own liberation, or in the liberation of others. Fear tactics operate only as long as we accept their rules, and this is what still keeps part of us in slumber.
But in the world we want, there is no room for fear. And our individual freedom starts being validated the day we commit to put it at the service of freedom for others. Let’s take part in the co-creation of this new world we want for ourselves and for others.
by Nicole Laurendeau
Mission, BC Canada
Nicole I really enjoyed reading your rave on freedom! You said; “We can only become what we sense we can be if we are free to do so.” Sometimes those of us who have had freedom our entire lives lose sight of what it really means. Thank you for shining your light on this part of my freedom I have failed to use to its true potential.
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