Freedom to What?
If freedom really means so much to America, why is it of such little importance that so many are so NOT free?
Last week on the 4th of July, the sun was waning in a pink and purple sky, the evening was humid. I savoured the feeling of knowing I had ahead of me an evening of (distanced) social connection with some dear friends who could care less for the fireworks and cared more to see one another deeply, as we are, in this moment. Finally, it felt a little bit like a normal summer’s evening. Just for one night.
I drove along Freedom Parkway in central Atlanta, listening to a mix of Motown and country. I was reflecting on the strange, absurd fact that I’ve ended up settled in what, growing up half a world away, was a world I only saw in the movies and books I read. All I wanted was to go on a high school exchange to the U.S of A and be a cheerleader. I absorbed a steady diet of Babysitters Club and Sweet Valley High. American pop culture was a parallel kind of ‘fake’ universe.
And here I am. The yellow school buses, the US postal trucks and the quaint porches with their porch swings are my daily reality. I am becoming one of those people who uses ‘y’all’ in her daily speech. Someone commented last night that my accent is a mashup that I can’t even really untangle anymore. My little white boys are all American. Whatever the hell that means. What is this? Who am I?
This America is my daily reality. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I’d been lured in by the dazzling ideals of freedom on some unconscious level. Consciously, I despise the association of freedom with the opportunity to have, consume, expand, own and dominate. Unconsciously, I’m no better than anyone else. I’ve always both been attracted and repelled at the same time.
“Proud to be an American, cause at least I know I’m free…” croons Lee Greenwood. As drive along, windows down, I can’t help myself, I’m a sucker for a rousing tune on a summer’s evening. Even if the contents give me dis-ease. I can’t stop listening. I rubber neck past this most saccharine example of collective self-delusion.
God, I want to believe in this on some level of emotion and idealism. Yet, if I take what I’ve seen and experienced first hand in this country and use that to determine what ‘freedom’ really means to ‘America’, I can’t but help ask — wait, what the fuck? What. The. Fuck?!
What kind of country builds a highway called ‘Freedom Parkway’ under which sleep mothers like Vanessa, who left her 3 year old daughter in NY with an aunt because, “I can’t have her on the streets with me,”, and men like Henry who’s sign says first, “God bless you,” and along which they plead for a buck to get by? (Go ahead, quell your conscience by saying they’ll just spend it on drugs…) What kind of country insists that freedom is the greatest good there is, “cause at least I know I’m free…” Lee reminds us, without regard to what one DOES with one’s freedom? I mean, I might not have a job, health insurance, access to healthy food in my suburban food desert, or feel I can live safely without a weapon; I might be numbing out with every kind of addictive substance, not least of which, addiction to debt, but, nevermind all that! Let’s not fuss about the details. Wind down the window, the wind in my hair — oh wait, I guess that makes me white. I’m not even sure — do Black people feel the wind in their hair? WHO CARES?! I shrill. Cause, at least I know I’m fucking free!
What good is our freedom if it leads us to enslave others? “There is no such thing as one way liberation,” as Glennon Doyle says. If freedom really means so much to America, why is it of so little import that so many are so NOT free?
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There is much that fascinates, compels and keeps me here in the U.S. of A. The small fact of being legally bound to stay thanks to being a co-parent of little white American boys with a big white American man is still genuinely only one piece of the puzzle — I do genuinely feel drawn here. I still am ‘done’ with transient life and know that everywhere is absurd in its own way, that you eventually must pick your poison. In an unexplainable way, I can’t tell you why my little speck of home here in the USA still feels like home (of course, what is home?), why I have no urge to flee right now even whilst things are so uncertain and bizarre and difficult.
But I also need to be able to say to you, ‘America’, what on earth? If I am grateful for my home here, grateful for my growing sense of roots and connection to you, I need to be able to be honest with you too. Come on America, take a look inside yourself. Can’t you hold the truth of your own paradoxes? Can’t you admit that something is fucked up about this picture? I promise you — there’s relief in the honesty. Just ask anyone who’s sat in a 12 step meeting.
America, perhaps the freedom you cherish so much is precisely found in learning to surrender to something greater than yourself. To realise that freedom from is nothing and freedom to is everything. Freedom to love while you’re alive. Freedom to be yourself. Freedom to really live in meaningful community while you’re alive. Freedom to risk it all for something far greater than yourself. Freedom to let go so tightly so your hands are there to help another. Freedom to hold space for another person’s pain. Freedom to contribute to collective healing through whatever creative force resides within you. If that is what freedom really is, America, then sign me up. I honestly think, deep down, that’s what you want it to be too.
