Today’s question – “What does freedom mean to you?”
Freedom for me is choice. I have the choice to make decisions for myself. Of course living in a society means we need laws but as long as my choices and decisions are not harming anyone, then I can make them.
I am a very big advocate of freedom. When governments stifle freedom based on the greater good, it harms the community in the longer run. When COVID was around, I was quite incensed that the government used that as an excuse to curb our basic freedoms in the name of safety. Even when there was more understanding about the pandemic, certain communities were locked up as a precedence had been set. Borders were closed, families separated, people incarcerated in jails, all in the name of saving the population.
I had a lot of arguments with friends at the time coz I was one of the few who thought this was wrong. I celebrated the people who were protesting against the mandated vaccination and protesting on the streets. In fact they were the true freedom fighters who were questioning the government, which was made of flawed humans like us. A few years down the line, the government is conceding that they possibly made a mistake in some of those decisions.
Freedom is a basic human right and we should all work towards defending it and fighting for it if required. We need to look at the humans who are stripped of that right to realise how critical it is for us to have that. I am glad that I was born in a free country and now live in a free country where I make choices everyday that align with the kind of life I want to lead. That is freedom to me.