Rousseau remarked, “Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.” This statement leads us to the question: Does freedom only mean being free from any kind of physical bondage? Is freedom only of the body? This is not the case. The chains here refer to both the physical as well as the mental chains that surround us at all times and at all places. What is more important is a mind that is liberated from all kinds of shackles, all the things that create hurdles in its path of the flight of imagination, of fulfilling the aspirations; the flight to nowhere. The freedom of thought is what empowers your creativity. It lends broad dimensions to your horizons of thought. A mind that is free to think is the thing that helps the person as well as his nation to attain new heights.
Another important aspect is the freedom of speech, which is often misused. This freedom doesn’t license the user to speak anything he likes, which is often taken to be its meaning. The exercise of the freedom of speech should liberate the person himself as well as his listener. But often it happens that the freedom of one person becomes a heart-rending volley of words for the other. This is not what is called freedom. It is rather that the freedom of thought and speech go hand in hand – think before you say something. What we do instead is, as Søren Kierkegaard has rightly put it, “People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have. For example, the freedom of thought. Instead they demand freedom of speech as a compensation.” The other side of this fact is that when we have the freedom of speech, we don’t use it at the right moment. The hurdle there is the universal “Who will bell the cat?” And this marks the end of the freedom.
We don’t use our freedom for the right cause; probably this is true in the case of those who have always been free, because as Pearl S. Buck says, “None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.”
The flight of a bird, the young child roaming here and there, the bubbling waters of a stream, the vast expanse of the oceans, the clouds on a roaming spree…these have all been considered symbolic of the perfect kind of a freedom, the one that we all would want to enjoy at one point of time or the other. But time has to change. Things won’t remain the same always. This is the freedom of life itself – changes its hues and we have to match ourselves with the ever changing tones of life. But we would all pray to enjoy the moment that John Clare wanted to cherish (as mentioned in ‘I Am’):
Another important aspect is the freedom of speech, which is often misused. This freedom doesn’t license the user to speak anything he likes, which is often taken to be its meaning. The exercise of the freedom of speech should liberate the person himself as well as his listener. But often it happens that the freedom of one person becomes a heart-rending volley of words for the other. This is not what is called freedom. It is rather that the freedom of thought and speech go hand in hand – think before you say something. What we do instead is, as Søren Kierkegaard has rightly put it, “People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have. For example, the freedom of thought. Instead they demand freedom of speech as a compensation.” The other side of this fact is that when we have the freedom of speech, we don’t use it at the right moment. The hurdle there is the universal “Who will bell the cat?” And this marks the end of the freedom.
We don’t use our freedom for the right cause; probably this is true in the case of those who have always been free, because as Pearl S. Buck says, “None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.”
The flight of a bird, the young child roaming here and there, the bubbling waters of a stream, the vast expanse of the oceans, the clouds on a roaming spree…these have all been considered symbolic of the perfect kind of a freedom, the one that we all would want to enjoy at one point of time or the other. But time has to change. Things won’t remain the same always. This is the freedom of life itself – changes its hues and we have to match ourselves with the ever changing tones of life. But we would all pray to enjoy the moment that John Clare wanted to cherish (as mentioned in ‘I Am’):
I long for scenes where man has never trod,
A place where woman never smiled or wept--
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie,
The grass below--above the vaulted sky.
This poem was written by John Clare (1793-1864) when he was confined in the General Lunatic Asylum in Northampton, where he spent about the last one-third part of his life.
(This product is licensed under:
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. Author: Amritbir Kaur)
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