What Does Freedom Mean To You?

Abraham Lincoln fought for freedom of humankind against slavery and said – ““I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal.”
Rabindranath Tagore in his poem “ Where the Mind is without Fear “ wrote about a Heaven of Freedom where is mind is without fear, and the head is held high, where knowledge is free and the world is united and not fragmented, and the mind grows in thought and action..
Mahatma Gandhi – Delivered India Freedom from the Britishers.
The Bible says of Jesus Christ - “ Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom”
And spirituality exponents are heard saying – When will I be free from this cycle of Life and Death?
Gautam Buddha - “And what, Brothers, is the root of Good? Freedom from Greed … freedom from Anger … freedom from Delusion is the root of Good.”
We can therefore see that Freedom is a word that has vast connotations..
In accordance with definitions written in dictionaries, it is the right of no constraints,
As an individual - freedom to me is basically the right or the opportunity for me to do anything and take my own decisions without hurting any other being. I am thankful that I am a free person and not a slave. I am thankful that I have the freedom of speech and that I can speak and express myself to whomsoever I want without being stopped. I can hold rallies, educational talks.
I can pursue the career of my choice and numerous options in every aspect of decision in life.
So to me Freedom is more than the literal or Dictionary meaning:
Freedom stands for creativity. The way we think, our imagination, could all have been restrained had freedom be restrained.
Freedom stands for invention. If there was no freedom, then we would still be thinking that the Sun goes around the Earth. Surely, coming to this advanced century, would not have been possible, if there was no freedom to research and put forward one’s ideas and views.
To me freedom is a sense of commitment, hope and pride. It allows me to feel proud of myself and hope that I can do better with each passing day because I know that I have the options and Freedom. It gives me a feeling of happiness and also allows me to express it in any way I want.

Most people would say freedom means doing what you want or even not doing it at all.

Freedom stands for fun. I can have fun during and after class, not always worried about what my class teacher is going to tell my parents on Parent Teacher Meetings. At the same time freedom allows me to waste time (at my own risk), play, and do various extra-curricular activities.
Freedom stands for making friends. Freedom allows us to talk to the person just standing or sitting next to me. It allows me to go out with friends and make new friends. It also allows one to send random Facebook friend requests to friends of friends.
Freedom gives me the opportunity and right to stand against any wrong doing and punish the wrong doer. It gives me an addition responsibility of being a citizen and maybe a savior for someone in the future. It provides me with an initiative to be kind, responsible, and stand for what is right even if it means standing alone.
Freedom stands for independence. India’s Independence has always hovered uneasily between hope and fear. The constitution of India promised a lot: protection of individual freedom, instantiation of equality and the creation of a new form of fraternity. Yet, independence was overshadowed by fear. We feared about individual freedoms like free speech and thus it was protected. State intervention was welcomed and praised but we soon realized that this was not freedom but an increase in state power. We hoped for a new fraternity, but the Partition caused another setback and continued to give our politics the colour of fear. To enter Independent India was to enter a life of contradictions, and the dialectic between those contradictions is still playing out.
After independence India acquired the power to author its own destiny after experiencing colonial subordination, finally able to take care of its own material power and prosperity. But for most of the nationalist movement, India’s independence was meant to be something more than simply a quest to protect India’s interests. India could itself be an example of a pluralist society, and even more ambitiously a helper of the human race in achieving the unity of mankind.
We gained sovereignty and freedom, but only to subordinate it to a new form of collective tribalism that led to the Partition of India.
Freedom is waking up every morning, not having fears of whether or not I’ll live that day. I’m confident to act as my normal self. I have no fear of this because our future, present, and past men and women have fought to keep us safe. Allowing us to confidently live our day.
It is all of these things that make us who we are, and with the freedom we have fought for, we really can be ourselves. So freedom might just be a word in the dictionary, but to me, freedom is getting to be one-hundred percent me.