Today is a public holiday in our country, the day of Struggle for Freedom and Democracy. I have been lucky to live 35 years in freedom, most of my life and the longest uninterrupted period of freedom this piece of land has experienced in at least the last 400 years.
But what is actually freedom and what’s its value? Is it “freedom” to lie, to hate, to kill, to have cheap fuel or gas? To be the center of the world and to eliminate anybody non-compliant?
How does our perception of freedom match Václav Havel’s popular quote “Truth and love will overcome lies and hatred.”? Do we value truth and love high or do we use them as swearwords? What do we need truth and love for and what’s more important for us?
Do we have enough courage to answer these tough questions honestly? If we do then maybe we’ll understand what are the problems of the current society. Why it’s not simply good guys against bad guys and why our society is ill as a whole.
We will lose what we don’t value high enough. And then also the rest. We will blame whoever else for this rather than our own hypocrisy. And things won’t stop getting worse and worse until we change ourselves. This happened so many times in the human history and it has been happening again. There is no hope until we stop calling for “freedom” with wrong reasons behind.
Or maybe there is some hope already. Look at the people who will guide us through the hardship times, like the students, Václav Havel and many others did once. Those who stick with truth and love, regardless of their personal consequences. Let’s take them as the right examples. Then one day, after all the suffering we caused to ourselves, truth and love will overcome lies and hatred again.
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