SO YOU THINK YOU ARE FREE? (IFC-S1: R32 ENTRY)

Freedom; you speak of it as if it is a family member, a sibling that travelled to Lagos and never came back home, never wrote, never replied your letters.

You speak of it in whispers when sleep tease your eyelids with visions of a better place than that bed space you occupy, that tiny part of the earth which you have claimed as yours.

You scream of it on social media, expressing your disgust at those who have so obviously chained others, you call them names, your write lengthy articles about the atrocities they commit, you carry placards, you contest positions in order to bring change, you win and life goes on.

You propound theories and teach theology on it as if you are an expert on the matter. You lay claim to utopias as if you have seen one before. You tell little children that you know what it means to be free and you make them believe you and then you watch them stumble, totter, fall, crawl, seeking this freedom but you say nothing because the truth is, you have no idea what it means to be free, to be truly free.

This world is filled with so much beauty and pain that sometimes one does not know if one is living in paradise or has gone to hell. Yet in either of these fictional futures; heaven or hell, is anyone free?

Let us not bore ourselves with a theological debate that leads no where but the concept of freedom has been, over time, tied to the physical; what the eyes can see, what the ears can hear, what the mouth can speak, what the skin can feel, what the hands can do and where the feet can go.

If we are deprived any of these physical experiences, it is seen as been in chains. The blind wants to see and the lame wants to walk. Kids want their space. They are proud of their rights; I know my rights! they say. Women scream for and against abortion, Men scream for and against wages, jobs, retirement, enlistment and so on. It is our right! It is what our fathers fought for; equality and freedom, justice and peace; rights of free men.

You love to look at your physical self and gauge your entire well being on what you see. You see your big office and account balance and you feel free. You see your lovely kids and the accolades hanging on the wall and you feel a sense of freedom. You go skydiving and you feel the adrenaline pumping and you feel free but you forget that at night before the last flick of your eyelashes, before you flee into the unknown realm of dreams and nightmares, you lie with your thoughts and then the chains begin to grip and tighten.

For we are more than flesh and blood. We are thoughts, ideas, social constructs, psychological experiments, and we are, each and every one of us, in chain one way or another.

Fortunately or unfortunately, some prisons are like old people's homes. There are kind helpers there willing to lead one to the toilet and wash one's ass when one is done, but they too will not let one go home to see one's grandchildren. It is still a prison but because of the environment, it seems to be paradise.

Freedom is taken from one the moment innocence leaves. The innocence of a child makes him or her believe everything, try anything and say anything.

A baby will dare to jump from the roof of a building of six floors, with a happy smile on her face and a certain assurance of surviving the fall. A man will not do so. A baby will curse a governor of a state or the chairman of the company, the father works in and he or she won't consider the consequences but a wife will not. A child will believe any fantasy story he or she is told but a man will not. Why?

The mind of a child is unfettered, it is free. It has not been trimmed and chopped at the edges to make a pretty garden; it grows wild and free. When Adam and Eve discovered that they were naked, what was the first thing they did? They hid themselves! Knowledge is the power to enslave.

Man is not free. Freedom is a myth. We are slaves and prisoners of our minds and as the mind is powerful than the body, we are prisoners all over. For, an intelligent and beautiful woman will not go to certain places at night because of fear. Fear which only those in prison should experience. There are men doing jobs they hate and they are afraid to leave the job yet they claim to be free. Rich men and women are hoarding money all over the world like rats yet they claim to be financially free; what a lie!

Deep within you know you are not free. You know that you are tied by certain things which you have no control over. When you dance or when you make love, don't you feel like you are untethered from something? Don't you feel as if you soar like a careless feather playing with the wild wind? These are among the few times when you come close to understanding what freedom means but even then you never truly let go, do you?

Freedom means the ability to be without fear, to be above the constraints of society, class, religion, race, language and geographical location. I repeat, freedom means to be. When you can fly like the bird and pick your food from the green earth, when you can walk away from everything without a thought, when you can give without hoping for reward, when you can love without a thought on ethnicity, skin colour, gender, qualification, political affiliation or religious beliefs, then you are opening the door to your cell and finally stepping into the light. Until then, sit in that your little space that fate allocated to you and pretend that you are free, after all death clears all doubt.

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Peace

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