Back in highschool it used to be such a sight when someone who had completed their high school studies came back to pick their certificates. We would crane our necks peering through the window to see what they looked like in clothes other than school uniform. We were impressed to see them in a hairstyle that was what was not allowed in school. In our opinion, they had finally made it in life, and here we were; miserable and hopeless. Prisoners of the present who had the hope of freedom in the future. The best moment was when this person offered to say hi to the class. One thing that they all said was that there was a lot of freedom `out there’ and in this case out there meant campus or college.
We could not help it imagining through the evening, life in a public university, where you would attend classes if you pleased, and would answer to no one, dress as you pleased, spent the weekend where you pleased, developed hobbies, made friends … This sounded the best thing that would happen to us. At this point, I feel like turning to you, my reader; look at yourself now, was any of that true?
In my opinion, all of that was true, but they failed to mention one thing; EXAMS. They failed to tell us that each of our academic moves was going to be reckoned. They failed to talk about their classmates who had been discontinued due to poor grades … Or about the one who had given in to alcoholism and was now in hospital with liver cirrhosis … they should have talked about this when they talked about freedom … When reality dawned on us, life was no longer the fairy tale it sounded it was going to be, some discovered this so late after all the above was at neck level, and they were drowning… really sad.
Well, this happens to be the situation with our christian life as we journey on earth. An array of options is presented in front of us, choices of how to live or not to live our faith, and the drama of life is presented as one that, to have the best experience of life, we need to have a happy-go-lucky attitude _ We are free.
Freedom today is portrayed as the absence of rules. Simply doing as we please, for our own happiness without regard for others, but freedom has its limitations, and this is where most people young and old, choose to give up their faith, because it does not allow them to do as they please. We could instead view freedom as a fruit of love. That all I do, I do out of love, and all that I fail to do, I fail to do it, out of love. A mother does not say that her child curtails her freedom every time when she has to wake up in the middle of the night, but she wakes up with so much love, ready to even stay up all night if need be. She is always happy at the service of her family, not thinking about herself.
This should be our attitude in our service of God. Total disposition without thinking about ourselves. “ Wasting ourselves in this fruitful loss, pouring our lives out like perfume to annoint our Lord’s feet. ” (Jesed). Then we will have found true freedom.