The Concept of Freedom

Humanity speaks about freedom as though it is an unattainable dream. And in so many ways, it is, for us and everyone impacted by us. Because the fight for freedom by one country or person or government or community still creates ripples in the small pond of our world that branch out and affect everyone else. People start wars all the time, over what? The ability to make a choice for themselves.

Freedom is a brilliant concept. It gives people hope, makes them want to fight for what they believe in. But at what cost? We fight, we kill, and we watch people just like us die for what we believe in. No, it doesn't matter if they were white and you were black, it doesn't matter if they were straight and you were gay, if they were European and you were American. We all bleed the same color.

We may all have different opinions. We may all like to fight for what we believe is right. But that's because we have competition in our blood -- but that's why people invented the concept of sports. War is promoted as the price of freedom, what must be done to give us the ability to make choices that are our own.

Sure, some people promote freedom without the need for violence. Gandhi, Martin Luther King Junior, these people have been scattered throughout humanity's bloody history. But these are but flickers of hope among the war-covered, colonizing past of our roots.

If you go back far enough, we are all connected to the first forms of life on this Earth. Even when we were our own race, we were still connected. Yes, some of us emerged in hot climates, where their skin darkened and tanned as the melanin in their bodies helped them to adapt for the sake of survival. Yes, some of us developed our own beliefs on what happens when we die, and why we came to exist on this Earth. Yes, we created separate lifestyles to adapt to what makes us comfortable. But why should we call these things out as if they make us inhuman?

Evolution has turned us into the most intelligent and diverse beings on the planet, and yet what have we done to prove it? We have created cars, robots, planes, medicines, discovered entire elements. But what have we done with it except use these new technologies to harm each other? We keep ourselves separate, we choose to ignore our differences rather than celebrate them. No matter what anyone believes as the "truth" about why we came to live, taking another human's life because we think it will quell or grant us freedom is never the answer. Violence, in any way, shape, or form, is never the answer.

Even now, we don't understand. In this modern-day society, when we can get anything we want with the click of a delivery service app, when we can cure polio and measles, when we can float through space and reach Mars, we can't stop wars. It makes no sense. Children act more kindly to each other than adults do, differences or not.

True freedom isn't found by causing violence and hurting the people that we want to listen to us. Freedom means the ability to choose. Freedom means embracing our differences and allowing each other the space to believe in their dreams. Freedom isn't granted to us, it isn't created by the signing of a document, it isn't spawned from going to war against the people who are just like us.

Speaking as myself, not as a human, or as a young Hispanic woman, or as someone who identifies as Bisexual, or as any other label someone might stick on me, I only know one thing for certain when it comes to the definition of the word "freedom." Freedom is something that we give ourselves. We cannot force someone to give us a noun. We create freedom when we give ourselves a choice, give ourselves the ability to ignore the people around us, and let our inner beauty, our inner selves, shine.

We cannot change the way people see us, the way they choose to act towards others. But we can change the way we view each other, the way we view ourselves. We don't have to wait for freedom to be given to us, wait for a dream to manifest. It's already there in front of us.

All we have to do is reach out for it.