As I stood in the cold winter night, barely dressed though my feet and body still warm from running, I could not resist and stopped there for a second. My eyes, sparkling in the light of hundreds of candles, were gazing somewhere and nowhere as I was lost in deep thoughts.
Thirty years ago, in the same spot, thousands of Lithuanians stood together against the injustice of the Soviet Army. Hundreds were injured that day and many died by throwing themselves under heavy war machines to prevent those from taking our dream from us. What was that dream? Freedom.
Ronald Reagan once said:
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same”
Lithuanian nation has learned this the hard way. Any collective freedom can be taken away. Same with physical freedom. Take, for instance, Stephen Hawking, who at the age of 21 was diagnosed with ALS after which he gradually lost the ability to move and speak. Freedom, almost any form of it, is not a given.
Why almost any, you’d ask? Well, the freedom to choose how to respond to any situation, no matter the circumstances, is one that can’t be taken from anyone. In his book, Man in Search of Meaning, Viktor Frankl talks about the experiences of the inmates in the Nazi concentration camps, which subjected a man to one of the most bizarre conditions in recent human history. Having lost any strings to their previous lives, their loved ones, their healthy bodies, and any hope to survive, some of the prisoners chose to embrace the hopelessness and stay human even in the direst of circumstances. Ultimately, taking such an attitude helped some of them to stay sane and survive through unbearable conditions.
We all have the freedom to take a stand against any condition. Man will always be subject to biological, psychological, or sociological conditions that are never guaranteed to keep him free from suffering but he will always be free to choose his stance.