What is freedom?

If Haider were to have asked me the question “What is freedom?” I most likely would have had trouble coming up with an answer right away. This is mostly because there is no straight forward answer or definition for the word freedom.

For me personally, I think of freedom as being able to express yourself. That is an extremely broad term so if I had to narrow it down I would probably say something like the ability to be able to express yourself in whichever way you choose to, with the exception of if it interrupts with another person’s freedom.

In the movie Two Wars, Haider describes how in Iraq you cannot walk the streets from sunset to sunrise. Although we might take walking the streets from sunset to sunrise for granite in America, this is a symbol of freedom. In my own life I have the right to freedom of speech. Not only does this allow me to express how I feel but also to have an impact in my community. Last semester I was in Political Science 155 and we were assigned a project that would take place over the entire semester. While doing this project we were given a topic and mine specifically was hunger in America. While doing this project I did a lot of research and the answers came to bother me about what hunger in America is really like. At the end of the project, our entire group of about 30 people got together and discussed what we came up with and how we would help change this if we decided to. The ability to discuss changes that we want and the option to follow through with them if we chose to do so is an example of what freedom means to me.