I DREAM OF FREEDOM

At the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom, 

Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he slays them. Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the citadel I have seen the freest among you wear their freedom as a yoke and a handcuff.

 And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfillment.

You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief,

But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound. And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding have fastened around your noon hour?

Khalil Gibran (The Prophet-Freedom)

As an avid reader and a lover of literature and poem, the above is perhaps one of my favorite pieces. i get lost reading this literal masterpiece. this great poet alludes that true freedom is found only when we find the freedom within us; when we loose the bonds that tie us down and like a phoenix rising from the ashes, ascend to the heights of awareness and actualization of the greatness that lays dormant within us.

While thinking about the notion of freedom, I have for the past few days realized that freedom isn't freedom until we extend to other people the opportunity to say no to us. We must allow other people to say no to us just as much as we must allow ourselves to say no to the things or people that don't add value to our lives. For a long time, I thought I walked in liberty or freedom until I realized a few months ago that I didn't allow others to make their choices.
We all have an opinion or idea of how great things would be if others would line up or toe the line. What we forget is that by having a predetermined idea of how others should perceive us or the choices that the others should make, we are in essence limiting ourselves to that particular modus operandi meaning that we begin to limit our success or happiness to the occurrence of certain decisions made by other people.

I am a follower of Christ and in my study of the holy book, I have deduced that the greatest gift given to mankind is liberty. It is in liberty that we have been redeemed. We are constantly reminded that liberty comes with the opportunity to choose. No one is compelled to be a believer, we get to make that choice and all we are asked is to confess or consciously acknowledge that choice. I have come to realize that we confess not so that we remind God that we are in his fold, no rather,  we confess so that we remind US that there is a choice that we have made. Whatever we constantly confess forms a belief  system because our brains are wired to believe any information it's exposed to and it doesn't matter whether this information is negative or positive; the brain takes it in and our belief system become a mindset.  Now, our success or failure will not be determined by what others believe about us, but by what we believe about us. Faith comes by hearing. ..doubt comes by hearing. ..success comes by hearing. ..The point am making here is that the information we expose ourselves to determine the output from our lives. it then goes without saying that your choices determines the quality of your life.

So, I was talking about liberty and allowing those around us to make their decisions. This point hit home just other day, I had an item that I was trying to sell off to my colleagues at work, I kept moving from one lady to the next convincing them that they needed to get it (well, and also because i badly needed someone to take it so i could get a replacement). After going round I finally settled on one that I thought without a doubt would take it and I wasn't prepared to take no for an answer. Well, we did haggle for a while with me telling her she has to take and her insisting no she didn't want to. This caught the attention of my immediate boss who sits across me. To cut the long story short, she came... she saw and she took. She made a comment that hasn't left me yet. She mentioned how I had bypassed her in my quest. In all honesty, I only bypassed her because I assumed that she would not be interested. i made the choice for her without giving her the opportunity to decide for herself. And that's just the thing. We are constantly making decisions for people instead of giving them the opportunity to choose.

You need to allow people to make the choice to love you, hang out, do business with you or even celebrate you. Let that person decide to follow your vision or your dream. Don't make assumptions that they want what you want because in essence you will be reducing that person to a marionette at the very best. Realize that when they do make a choice and that choice does not include you, that a no is as good as a yes. Understand that as a free moral agent, that person is allowed to say no to you. Don't hate them for that. Appreciate that they are confident enough to exercise their liberty and make a choice. Who knows, in time they might change their mind and the no become might become a yes or maybe they might not change their minds and that's still ok because your happiness or success cannot be limited to another's decision. choose to be happy, successful, loving, faithful and valiant despite of the odds stacked against you. again the keyword here is CHOOSE.

What am saying is freedom isn't really freedom until we are free to say NO and also accept a NO. Freedom isn't really freedom until we allow ourselves to make mistakes and more importantly rise up from those very mistakes and become.
Live life, quit being afraid of your own shadow!

Explore life, discover your limits then defy them. Now, that's freedom. 

m.