Celebrate freedom without abusing it

On August 15, as we were looking forward to a quiet day indoors, there was a minor emergency at home. It got my husband and me driving to a nearby pharmacy to pick up a first aid kit. What would have been a swift 10-minute drive to the store became a slow half-hour one, thanks to a couple of processions along the way in celebration of our 75th Independence Day. The processions had youngsters and grown-ups, some marching by foot and others on slow-moving vehicles. They were jubilant and replete with the air of freedom and liberty.

However, the participants were totally oblivious of the constraints they were putting on others on the road by their parade of celebration. Traffic was disrupted and their freedom to march was at the expense of the freedom of the others on the road. This got me thinking and I pondered on what true freedom ought to really mean for all free people.

True freedom entails that we consciously and deliberately make the right choices in our personal lives and as citizens of a nation. This means that we ought to choose honesty over cheating and lying. It means that we ought to choose to abide by the laws and regulations of the country instead of evading and overriding them. It means that we ought to choose decency over brute behaviour. It means that we ought to choose moral and ethical values over promiscuity and crime. In short, true freedom means we that we do not abuse our freedom and end up being selfish, ignoble, lazy, weak or irresponsible. True freedom comes with embracing our responsibilities as free people and in living for the progress of ourselves and our country.

When our forefathers fought for freedom, they intended to bring us freedom from oppression and exploitation. However, today freedom for the vast majority of us boils down to freedom from hardships, from discipline, from fairness, from the stern voice of duty, from the pain of self-sacrifice, from living by principles and from thinking about the freedom of others. Therefore, before any Independence Day celebration, every free citizen of this free nation ought to first take an oath to not abuse freedom.