We have all heard the saying “free as a bird.” Freedom is a blessing that is valued all over the world. Some countries have partial freedoms while other countries have complete independence. It made me wonder why freedom is so valued. Do those who have total freedom value it as much as those who don’t? In a guided journal my mom gave me for Christmas last year it asked the question: What does freedom mean to you? Let me ask you the same question: What does freedom mean to YOU?
I guess to really answer that question, one must know what
freedom is. Most people think freedom is
to be able to do what you want, where you want, how you what, with whom you
want. The key word there is want. In other words, we don’t have to cater to
anyone or anything, including laws. But what if I told you that this definition
was only partially correct, if at all?
In the Oxford dictionary freedom is defined as: the power to act, speak,
or think as one wants. The state of being not imprisoned or enslaved.[1]
So, what it is saying is: in the state of being in power to choose for one’s
self. The key word is choose. There is no mention of being relieved from
the responsibility to follow rules or laws.
Being a teacher I get so see my students make choices all
day long. Some are good and some
poor. But the choices are theirs to
make. In my classroom, I have a set of
rules the students must follow.
Consequences follow no matter what choice is made. This is justice is full action. It is just like the law of gravity. If I were to drop a ball then the consequence
would be that the ball would plummet to the ground. If left uninterrupted, the ball would hit the
floor and disturb what was in its path.
However, if another person were to stick out their hand and catch it,
the end result would be different. The
consequence still followed and the law of justice still was honored, but mercy
was the factor that changed the course or the end result of the ball.
Many people get frustrated or even angry with the law of
justice. It has no regard for the
feelings or condition of a person or thing.
However, it is the law that creates order in our world. Without justice, trust would be diminished
and chaos would rule. People would be
doing what, where, how, with whom they liked with no consequences and
everything would be in an uproar. We would then be enslaved by chaos because
without order our choices available would decrease and power to choose would
weaken.
Luckily we have laws and rules. Rules do not confine or restrict us. In reality, rules and laws give us
freedom. They allow us multiple choices
by the minute, even more if we choose to obey them. In my kindergarten classroom I have a clip
chart based on student behavior. Each student has a clothes pin with their name
on it. Each day students start in the
middle green square entitled “Ready to Learn”.
Depending on their choices they can either move up or down. As a natural consequence, those whom make
more positive choices than negative tend to earn more trust in the
classroom. However, just because a
student makes a great choice and moves up or a poor choice and moves down
doesn’t mean they will stay there the entire day. They are free to make choices, but justice
will be honored and their clothes pin will move. I am always there to encourage good behavior
and show what it looks like. Because I
care for my students, I want them to do well. I can’t, however, force them to
choose good by making their choices for them.
That would go against the very thing I was trying to teach them: how to
better ones self. The good news is that
they have multiple chances to improve.
Mercy plays a role in my classroom as well. If my students didn’t have a chance to try
again, how would they learn? There would
be no motivation to even try.
The power to improve one’s life is the motivation behind
freedom. If we didn’t have rules we couldn’t learn and if we didn’t learn we
couldn’t progress. What a liberating
thought to think that our power to choose can make us better people. When we continually make poor choices with no
effort to do better we are actually subjecting ourselves to bondage. We are confined to a state of misery making
no progress. And if we have no motivation to progress, then there is no point
to freedom. However, because of the law of justice and mercy rolled into one, the
more progress we make, the more choices become available to us. The more choices we have, the freer we
become.
So, to answer the question posed in my journal: What does
freedom mean to you?.... it means everything.
I am tremendously grateful for my power to choose. When we change freedom from a selfish
perspective where all we think about is ourselves, to one that enables us to
make this would a better place, the blessing has so much more value. If we try to do better each day, we are doing
good to our neighbors because it allows more freedoms or choices to take place.
And that, my friends, is when we are truly free.
[1]
Freedom (2018) Oxford Living Dictionaries. Retrieved on August 11, 2018 at https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/freedom
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