Everyone has once on its life heard about freedom, and it is also a word used commonly, in fact sometimes young people requires and ask for freedom or maybe people on their jobs or relationships, etc. This just let us see how people have wrong established this essential concept. But this could be fixed, and is also a needing in nowadays, taking into account that freedom is a human right that unfortunately has lost its value and sense, but do we really know hat being free means? There is more than one definiton for this word. The most common and easy to understand are the ones that we all know. That freedom is the fact of not being enslaved. Freedom is being able to speak and think what everyone wants without restraint. Freedom is making your own choices. As long as you decide to just give that brief look to freedom`s meaning it will be difficult to really establish it, and this should be our wish.
It is here, where surges a huge interrogant, how could freedom be established and preserved? Well, once you know it, it is not an option or something that you need to take time to think about. It has become in our responsibility. Thereafter it is necessary to give a look back, to see since when does freedom exist? How was it discovered? We must remont to old times. There are some anchor stories and texts such as the America`s independence. In here, it can be seen when American colonies gained their Independence and created a free nation. But things weren`t easy since its start, at first, the United Stated knew that needed a constitution, but the road to its ratification was by no means easy to get. “The ancient world had seen small-scale democracies in various Greek city-states and pre-imperial Rome, but none of these had been founded in fullly democratic fashion” (Akhil Reed Amar). In the last quote we can see how Akhil Reed Amar wrote in his text “From America`s constitution: a biography” found in the Book My Perspectives American Literature, that in this context democracy was seen as freedom, and consequently as an unalienable right. After the named not easy process, in where americans fighted hard and didn`t give up, the Constitution was finally drafted in Philadeplhia during the summer of 1787, demonstrating that a important tool to establish freedom is to fight and do something when unfair actionss get comitted. Although there were also hundreds of people then enslaved, but something is something, and it is hard to change people`s thinking way after they`ve thought like that their whole life. Everything is a process.
Equally important there is the story of Olaudah Equiano. Olaudah Equiano was an African writer born in Nigeria in the 18th century who lived in England and in his American colonies. His life was rough. Olaudah wrote his autobiography, in where he describes how he and his sister were kidnapped by slave traders, taking them to African Coast. After a trip of approximately seven months he didn`t see his sister, and then he was taken to other ship with other captives to North America. In the reading “From The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano” can be seen details of that horrifying journey. There is a fragment in where he says: “I envied the freedom they enjoyed, and as often I could change my condition for theirs” (Equiano) It is possible to realize that when a person experiences a real situation being private of liberty it is so painful, live with a lot of apprehensions. In this case, the fault was of the avarice of people that transported slaves, because they really lived on very bad conditions, and also the cruelty of white people highlighted in this story. This let us see that in a lot of cases, life is unfair, and we have a privilege being born in the place that we did, and having the life conditions that we have. So, I think that this just can teach us that freedom sadly sometimes is a privilege, and let us see how authority and wrong government or wrong thinking ways can ruin a lot of lives.
To conclude, it must be taken into account the fact that freedom is a right that we all should have respected, it is our needing and responsibility, like it was said before, to work in pro of its establishment and preservations. Yes, maybe it isn`t as easy as it looks, but nothing worth having comes easy. We are young, we are capable, we can be free and make others free. Also, in nowadays, as a big advantage, we can find support and help on governmental institutions, as in systems and processes of law. We can`t be disappointed when seeing how unfair our ancestors were, but cheerful to make things different now that we can and have the tools.
By María José Calderon/Estudiante GCF
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