F is for Freedom

What does freedom mean to you? Is it knowing your horizon is endless and with that so are your dreams? Or does your freedom have limits; known boundaries that can be measured and weighed, cut and devised into halves and thirds? However you determine this righteously owned liberty, consider the matter in which you excersize it. Do you take it for granted? The worst part is that for most North Americans, the question of freedom is not a question at all. We imprison racist extremists, terrorists, and criminals because it's the right thing to do. We provide equal rights to gays and lesbians and legalize same sex marriages because it's the right thing to do. We provide adequate means to an education to all people equally because it's the right thing to do. But what does it all mean when we don't appreciate it?

While in Boumalne du Dades, I met my new favorite person. His name was Johnathan (just a nick name) and he was a breath of fresh air. He was gay and living in an Islamic country, doing everything but struggling under the weight of the bricks his peers stacked on top of him. He was passionate in his pursuit for happiness and his thirst for knowledge overwhelmed me. Johnathan was fluent in Arabic, Berber, French, Spanish, English, and Italian. The people of his village were divided between those that shouted words of hate and those that embraced his outlandish lifestyle. Tourists flocked to his side, attracted by his charismatic and out going persona. And not once did I see him buckle under the pressure.

Johnathan had more potential to be great than anyone I had ever met in a classroom. He studied as hard as he partied, welcomed as much as he thanked, and let me take a glance at the "difficult" life I thought I had. Even when he spoke of the family he was no longer welcome to be apart of, I could see the fire deep within the pool of his chestnut eyes burning thick with hope. Then it came time for me to ask why he still lived in this village that could no longer contain his promising future. Patiently, he explained in a tone reserved for the rehearsal of this speech. For a Moroccan citizen to leave his country, he must have a valid European visa, $20,000 to his name, and somewhere to go. I was shocked at the hoops this young man would have to dive through in order to put a stamp in his passport. But his voice did not pour vinegar into an open wound. He just smiled, shrugged, and told me that one day he would get there. He knew, as I never will, the truth behind this type of perserverance. Unlike myself he had not been given the rights to his education, but paid for it through the currency of hard work. I left University after a year of relentless struggling; I left knowing that there were things in this world, valuable things, that I could never learn in a classroom. I was right.

That night, as I lay awake in bed, tossing and turning against the will to do nothing, Johnathan kindly welcomed another stranger into his life for a cup of tea and a sneak peak at what aspiring to be something great really looks like.