Freedom in Connectedness
On "interbeing", the narrowing of our political imagination, and learning to vote with awareness
Introduction
“Freedom” is a word often spoken quickly. It is considered an important value in our lives. We invoke it in debates, in election platforms, in conversations with friends; it appears everywhere. Everyone appeals to it, claims to defend it, or insists on their right to it.
But when a word is used so frequently, the risk is that we stop examining what it truly means.
Many people speak of freedom as if it were purely personal: I decide, I choose, I act. It is my freedom, after all. Freedom then becomes a kind of muscle—trained by distancing oneself from others. As if a human being could exist autonomously, as a self-contained organism, sufficient unto itself.
Those who have meditated for some time, or who have followed any of the wisdom traditions, who have cultivated the capacity to become still and to enter into silence, know that this is, at best, only half the truth. A human being arises and exists only and entirely in and through relationship.
