Freedom
is man’s capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to
mold ourselves. Freedom is the other side of consciousness of self; if we were
not able to aware of ourselves, we would be pushed along by instinct or the
automatic march of history, like bees or mastodons…
Consciousness
of self gives us the power to stand outside the rigid chain of stimulus and
response, to pause, and by this pause to throw some weight on either side, to
cast some decision about what the response will be…
As
the person gains more consciousness of self, his range of choice and his
freedom proportionately increase. Freedom is cumulative; one choice made with
an element of freedom makes greater freedom possible for the next choice. Each
exercise of freedom enlarges the circumference of the circle of one’s self…
Freedom
is shown in how we relate to the deterministic realities of life…Freedom is
involved when we accept the realities not by blind necessity but by choice.
This means that the acceptance of limitations need not all be a “giving up,”
but can and should be a constructive act of freedom; and it may well be that
such a choice will have more creative results for the person than if he had not
had to struggle against any limitation whatever. The man who is devoted to
freedom does not waste time fighting reality; instead as Kierkegaard remarked,
he “extols reality.”
Whether
one has tuberculosis or is a slave like the Roman philosopher Epictetus or a
prisoner condemned to death, he can still in his freedom choose how he will
relate to these facts…Freedom is most dramatically illustrated in the ‘heroic’
actions, like Socrates’ decision to drink the hemlock rather than compromise;
but even more significant is the undramatic, steady day-to-day exercise of
freedom on the part of any person developing toward psychological and spiritual
integration in a distraught society like our own.
Thus
freedom is not just the matter of saying “” or “” to a specific decision: it is
the power to mold and create ourselves. Freedom is the capacity, to use
Nietzsche’s phrase, “to become what we truly are.”
Rollo May, “Man’s Search for Himself”, (New York: Dell
Publishing, 1953), p.160-173.
