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Proyecto Visión 21

I would like to celebrate the Independence of my mind and soul

Francisco Miraval

Several countries celebrate their independence this month. Canada, for example, has a celebration on July 1st. In the United States, of course, we celebrate the Fourth of July. In Argentina, Independence Day is on July 9th, and July 14 is Bastille Day in France. Other countries have their celebration at other times of the year. Yet, one day I would like to celebrate the independence of my mind and soul.

I frequently meet people who, after reading these columns or participating in some of my classes or presentations, come to me and say something like “We shouldn’t talk about this things”. It doesn’t matter what “This things” are.

What are then the things we can talk about? A man recently told me “Only of the things in agreement with what my grandmother taught me”. I was tempted to ask him why then he was at a presentation about the impact on us of constant social and demographic changes.

My grandmother, I should say, taught me many wonderful I still remember and share with my children every time I can. But she never said that my freedom of thought was reduced to only what she taught me (as if it could be possible to literally apply her teachings to a new country, a new century, a new culture, new technologies, and a new social context.)

So, we can lose the independence of our mind and soul if we are trapped inside the traditions which formed us and our ancestors (traditions, by the way, we should all treasure and value.) But we can also lose the independence of our mind and soul due to other factors.

For example, a few years ago, during the first day of classes at the beginning of a new semester at a local university, a Latina student seated on the first row began to laugh immediately after I wrote my name on the whiteboard. She wasn’t laughing at me. It was an anxious laugh.

A few minutes later she was able to control herself and she explained why she laughed. She told me she went to kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, high school, and two years of college without ever having a Latino professor. “I thought only White people were allowed to teach,” she said.

In other words, the traditions of the past and the circumstances of the present limit and restrict our intellectual and spiritual freedom to the point that the only thing we can share in public is an innocent selfie, the picture of a sunset, or a kitten next to an inspirational quote in social networking site.

Yet, neither the past nor the present are the biggest chains limiting our internal freedom. In fact, we ourselves, each of us, consciously or unconsciously limit the independence of our minds and souls because we seldom, if ever, recognize what or who is trying to influence and control us.

What is true freedom of mind and soul? Such a question goes beyond the limits of this column.

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