On Freedom
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Barbie dolls, candies, and doll houses were my treasure during childhood days. I live only to eat, sleep and play. No responsibilities. I was confined in the four corners of our house and under the control of my parents but I do not mind at all. The sense of freedom was an absurdity. What, then, does freedom really means? Soren Kierkegaard, a philosopher, stated that freedom is that which enables man to pass from the aesthetic state to the ethical, and ultimately, to make the leap of faith, the highest of man’s liberty. This means going beyond the basics and achieving our full potential. In relation to Kierkegaard’s statement, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs can be a very good illustration of how man achieves his basic needs and proceeds to the higher level of human desire until he reaches his optimum potential. According to Maslow, we need to satisfy our physiologic needs first. It includes food, water, shelter, and clothing. Then our safety or security needs. After which is the need for love and belongingness, followed by the esteem need which refers to the need to be a unique individual with self-respect, and finally, self actualization, where an individual experiences his purpose and realizes his inner potentials.
As I grew older, the desire for liberty set its own course. I do not only live to exist but I struggle each day to find my purpose and make an action to fulfill them. It is not just matter of me-myself-and-I now; instead, it is giving more and more of me to others, hoping that it would make a difference in their lives as much as it would make a difference with mine.
Everyday, we make choices that affect not only our lives but others as well. We can choose to help or ignore. We can choose to love or hate. We can choose to obey or not. We can also choose to transcend to the ethical state or not. However, we should remember that we are responsible for our own choices. To accept responsibility for our choices means we accept our current condition of life or we choose to change it.
These choices can make so much impact… more than we realize. Therefore, as human beings, should strive to live our lives in its truest sense and not merely exist. Let us be the person that God wants us to be. Only then can we say that we have freedom.
This is a reflection paper on freedom that I submitted in one of my M.A.N. class last Saturday. Double purpose... a project and a blog entry. :)