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0 Freedom of Expression: The Key to a Life Worth Living
Written by Oluwanifemi Oladoye
“Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.” – John Milton
Freedom of expression is being able to be who you are without being held back by yourself, anyone, or any system. Our freedom to express ourselves should not be debated. I believe our identity can be likened to oxygen. Just as no one has the right to cease a person’s breathing, you and I should not restrain anyone from just being. Being a human being is more than being. Being human is more than just existing; we are made to live; we are also made to believe and be everything we think or imagine to be. All these traits — feeling, thinking, imagining, and believing -make us different from animals, but why is our freedom more bound than theirs? Our freedom to express who we are defines our ability to live. Therefore, when we restrain our expression, we constrain our identification.
We live if we can express what makes us feel alive.
But when that freedom is taken away, it is safe to say that our lives have been taken away. And when this freedom is taken away, we no longer live; we just exist.
Freedom of expression is the liberty to live because expression births life.
What are those things that make you feel alive? Is it time with friends at the beach, singing in the shower, praise and worship in church, reading a novel while in transit, a road trip to Mexico, Netflix and chill, your skin care and hair wash day, time at the museum, whatever it may be all of those things make you feel alive because you have these: pointing to them and saying- your eyes, your ears, your mouth, your hands, and your legs.
You can express all that makes you feel when nothing binds your senses. So let’s take this blindfold, just one, and to you, it may signify a limit that could be another limit to your neighbour. This blindfold could be people, society, systems, and even yourself.
- Freedom to express with my eyes
“Society, systems, people and even I, restraining myself from seeing, knowing and experiencing all that is to be seen. That means I cannot be me if I can’t see. But, I can be me if you or anyone purposely keep me in the dark. There will be darkness and loss of identity when there is no liberty in expression.” – Nifemi Oladoye
- Freedom to express with my mouth: how can I speak, how can I respond, and how can I communicate when there are chains?
- Freedom to use my hands to make and even break. But when I’m bound, how can I do those? Freedom of expression gives me room to create the future I desire with my hands and destroy everything I do not aspire to be.
- My legs should take me everywhere and nowhere if I want to be still. I should not have to be limited if I want my legs to express me and take me to any expression. I should be free to walk, run, jump, fly, and soar. Our legs should be free to grow to become wings; that is possible if we do not cage this one.
- The mind: do you think this blindfold knows where to wrap my mind? Of course, it could if it knew where it was.
You see, it is easier to restrain all that you see and harder to lock up things our naked eyes can’t see, not even a microscope can. So why is there a compulsion to clip these things that give us wings to fly high? Our mind’s ability is beyond what this room can contain, so why do you think it is what you can detain? You can make a whole kingdom if you give your mind that freedom.
The mind is where all other expressions flow, don’t you know? So, to me, freedom of expression means that no one gets hurt because of their mind’s thoughts. Because if you limit this mind and all the other fruits it births, how can I be free, and how can I indeed be me?
Napoleon Hill once said, and I quote, “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.” That is true because my mind and your mind birth creativity, and my mind and your mind birth reality.
Freedom of expression is the allowance for the mind to give life to all that makes us humans: our eyes, legs, mouth, hands, thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and dreams. With freedom of expression, dreams are not limited to nighttime, like bats afraid to fly in the presence of light. But with the light that freedom of expression brings, every human is an eagle with dreams as wings to soar even at dawn.
Oh, how can I forget the skin. My skin! Freedom of expression gives me the liberty to be Black without having a pistol at my back. I express myself by being Black, by being African and by being free to be Nigerian. This skin is not just colour. Your skin and mine are our identities. That needs to be at liberty. The system should not make it a sin for one to have Black skin. We should be free to be in this skin and not have to be scared to want to even crawl under it.
Freedom of expression is the freedom to wear your identity — your skin, your culture, your language, your accent, your marks, your successes and failures, your religion (I should be free to call on my God, the Lord of lords, capital G to be precise. My sister in hijab should be free to wear her crown without having her get a jab). Freedom of expression is giving freedom to all these things that make you, YOU!
Everything that makes a human; human is their expression.
Should there be any restriction in this expression, then there is no humanity. We should be free to crawl, free to walk, free to fall, free to rise, free to run, free to fly and then free to soar.
We all yearn for the freedom to receive love, but we should do more to give love to all. Freedom of expression is love. We all in this room are not the same, which means there are distinctions in how we express ourselves, which means we should tolerate our differences in love. Freedom of expression is not an allowance for just one kind of expression; instead, it gives room for all types. Would you want to hurt your sister, who prefers having her milk first, and then the cereal because you like it the other way? No. You’d still love her despite her weirdness. And despite her weirdness, you’d still leave her to express. Like Maya Angelou said, “In diversity, there is beauty, and there is no strength.” The sky is vast enough for all sorts of birds to fly, so give yourself and your neighbour that freedom to just… be free.
Freedom of expression, to me, is the liberty to live because I believe expression births life. Therefore, freedom of expression is the key to a life worth living.
References
- Milton, J. R., & Alvis, J. (1999). Areopagitica and other political writings of John Milton. http://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA44233575
- Maya Angelou quotes (Author of I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings). (n.d.). https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/3503.Maya_Angelou
- Napoleon Hill quotes (Author of Think and Grow Rich). (n.d.). https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/399.Napoleon_Hill
