One article that my Intro to Cultural Sustainability class read before the residency began was Wendell Berry’s “Hell hath no limits.” This is a piece that especially struck me, and the quote that follows in particular:
"In our limitless selfishness, we have tried to define 'freedom,' for example, as an escape from all restraint. But, as my friend Bert Hornback has explained in his book The Wisdom in Words, 'free' is etymologically related to 'friend.' These words come from the same Indo-European root, which carries the sense of 'dear' or 'beloved.' We set our friends free by our love for them, with the implied restraints of faithfulness or loyalty. And this suggests that our 'identity' is located not in the impulse of selfhood but in deliberately maintained connections."
This passage highlights the intersection between sets of words critical to social justice that we often do not relate to one another: free with friend, escape with connection. As someone attempting to create a program built around peer to peer connection, this is particularly resonant. This is the philosophy behind such a program. We think of freedom as a right, as a need, but we do not think of it in terms of connection and love. Not just "free to be you and me" but free to be loved, adored, held, and heard. All of these take two people, and I appreciate Berry's initiative in bringing our attention to the selfishness with which we tend to define and interpret freedom and the connectedness with which we tend to enact it.
For the next couple of years, I plan to embrace this connected freedom and base the peer listening program I am helping to create on this concept. This program will be an opportunity for college students to feel as though they are free (and qualified) to make connections with other college students. Those students who have issues they do not want to or cannot face alone will be free not to have to. This is a scenario that in my opinion should be the right of any student, just like freedom in general.
No comments:
Post a Comment