Free No Matter What

My writing mentor had once said that Malcom X read the entire dictionary.  Ambitious as I am, I sat down with a grammar dictionary just about every day for two months.  The dictionary I read in that time is the rather famous Fowler’s Modern English Usage.  But upon completion of reading Fowler’s, I found out that not only did Malcom X read the entire dictionary, he wrote down every single entry in a composition book during a seven year prison sentence.    

Malcom has said that studying the dictionary opened worlds to him which he found through reading books.  Before studying the dictionary, he missed a lot of knowledge which he could later absorb.  Malcom also said that reading gave him freedom—that he did not feel imprisoned while he did his sentence.  And it is this last statement which is really important in my eyes, and to the message of this blog. 

Uprooting order, as I intend to do with this blog, has to start from within.  If Malcom X can be free while behind bars, we all can find a freedom which almost no oppressor can take from us.  Finding this freedom may be the greatest act of defiance I know.  Buddha found freedom in meditation.  Others find their freedom in leading alternative lifestyles—whether by traveling or living off the grid, and possibly in an intentional community.  But let us not devalue any one person’s path towards freedom over most any others. 

Oppression is the process of using power to direct the lives of others in such a manner to give one person’s freedom greater import than another’s.  All people have the right to be free but only in a society which grants freedom for all.  What we must do, in order to further expand the boundaries of liberation, is find our path to freedom in the face of our oppression.

I’ve found a great deal of freedom in the last month in which I’ve been working with my hands.  There is something about doing useful work which has let me unfurl myself to a state of self I’d almost forgotten.  Many years ago, I did trade work but I diverted my course for a while, mostly because I resented having to do physical labor.  But when I left the working class, I fell into a miserable state of mind which left me bereft of any feeling of freedom or liberation.  I would eventually be diagnosed with schizophrenia and in need of institutionalized mental health care for five years.

I did, however, go on to work at a social services agency where I used my life experience to be a person who could relate to and support others struggling with alternative mind experiences or coming out of jail.  But finding trade work—like the work I did when I was young—has given me new insight into how I can discover my freedom.  I no longer devalue the path that I took to get here because every step has allowed me to come closer to myself. 

It has been that the more I allow myself to be myself the freer I am.  I just so happens that my true self was hidden under the façade of many lies society had told me.