Freedom

My birthday is on July 4th. Yep, I'm a firecracker girl. I've been contemplating the meaning of Independence day. The freedom we love, the freedom we value. The freedom we may not completely understand.

Our nation has been wrought with pursuing freedom and happiness. We value our rights: our right to the freedom of speech, the freedom to express ourselves, pursue happiness, marry whomever we want...but there is one aspect of freedom that I think we forget about.

The freedom to listen, to wait and be silent.

I am still learning this lesson. I am so good at being self-righteous and proudly expressing my opinion that I've made a fool of myself, or worse, hurt beloved friends and family members. However, I am slowly learning to listen, wait, and decide if I should just be silent.

Moral and political issues plague our society and everyone has an opinion. I am not saying that we aren't entitled to our opinion-on the contrary, we can think whatever we want to think-that's how the brain works-we may be influenced, but we must eventually think for ourselves and decide what we believe.

But should we always express that belief or opinion?

I love to talk about books. I also love to share my memories of bed-time stories with my children while they were growing up. A few years ago I shared this love with a friend of mine and how proud I was that I read 6 of the Harry Potter books out loud,  cover-to-cover. My friend immediately went into her very negative opinion of Harry Potter and how she absolutely forbade these books in her home. I was so shocked by her vehemency that I just didn't say anymore. And it wasn't because she offended me with her opinion, she is entitled to that opinion, but her rant expanded enough to make me feel like I was wrong for reading those books to my children. My first impulse was to angrily fight back, to support my decision to read the books and to prove her wrong! But I took a deep breath and thought for a second and walked away. Fortunately she started talking to someone else so it was easy to walk away. This experience also gave me the opportunity to learn more about my friend, who she was and her personality. But I knew it wasn't worth it to speak up. I decided to stay silent.

Whether or not to read Harry Potter is obviously not the most serious issue we face in modern society, but I have learned that in the most serious issues, if sharing my opinion and forcing my righteousness on someone is going to make them feel foolish, or wrong, or even make them feel like they need to angrily defend themselves and be just as self-righteous as me, maybe I need to listen more, carefully wait and maybe even be silent. Every time I am faced with someone else attempting to prove my opinion is wrong, I am learning to take a breath and pray for wisdom in defending my opinion. If I go into an attack, then neither one of us are listening or accomplishing anything. If I feed into the mass hysteria of sharing my opinion then I become part of the shouting, protesting and I forget what Truth really stands for.

There is a time to stand up for the truth. There is a time to speak out against the wrong. We have the freedom to do so. But we also have the freedom to respect, love, be silent and wait for the right time and the right way to speak out.

Yeah, I know, I'm probably in dreamland here, saying we should just all get along, but hey, this is my blog and I have the freedom to write what I want.

And you have the freedom to choose to read it, or not.

I appreciate that aspect of freedom too. The freedom of expression. How many times have we seen protests against books, movies, art exhibits, etc... Of course, all that protest does is just make us read it, see it, talk more about it, make it famous. What if we just didn't? Don't like the book- don't read it. Think that artist is vulgar? Protesting the vulgarity just feeds into the sensationalism. Just don't go the the art exhibit! We have the freedom to just don't do it. Don't go.

Ok, there is a fine line, like I wrote, sometimes a stand for Truth must be made, but God gave us the brains to listen, wait and decide.