“One of the things I learned when I was negotiating was that until I changed myself, I could not change others.”
Nelson Mandela“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.”
Nelson Mandela
"Freedom" is a word I hear frequently in these days of lockdowns and restrictions due to the spread of the Covid virus. Many of us who've not had to deal with much in the way of personal restrictions before are having a difficult time accepting these restrictions and feel our Individual Rights are of ultimate importance. Opportunities we've taken for granted; jobs, school, social gatherings, our rights to move about and travel freely have been limited.
Some of the books I've read recently such as Nelson Mandela's book "Long Walk to Freedom", Thomas King's "Indians on Vacation" and Susan Straight's "I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked out all the Pots" are making me think about what this word "Freedom" means.
I'm wondering how to be free if freedom means we require a set of external conditions...
and if those external conditions are met for me and not the rest of humankind who and what am I that I deserve them and how free am I really??
I am grateful for this opportunity to read and learn and continue to think beyond what I thought before. Thinking about what my "hopes" are and making choices reflecting these hopes means I get to give up wishing to go back to the past "freedoms", which my mind has already idealized and even were I to go back I am not the same person ... What a Relief!!!
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