“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

-Victor E Frankl

Freedom is a word that has been interpreted in several ways, some argue that freedom is the ability to solve your problems while others argue that freedom is the ability to choose what you want to do in life.

In a world of 7.8 billion other individuals, interaction is constant and inevitable. It is from these, that abstractions such as freedom arise. Honed through eons of contemplation and discussion Freedom is a concept that has fascinated minds through the ages. Whatever you believe, Freedom is a term created and given meaning by humans.

Having inspired countless individuals, the concept of freedom has developed differently in each one of us. And when we decide what our freedom means, we are all uniquely defining ourselves as individuals with our values. Our interpretation of this idea determines our identity and who we are as individuals.

One of my favorite definitions of freedom was presented by Viktor Frankl in his book “Man’s Search for Meaning. Even so for me, freedom stands for universal responsibility. Seemingly at odds with the concept of freedom, its true essence though, responsibility is the same.

Quoting Dicionary.com, the word responsibility was first recorded in the 1780s and 90s as a compound word formed by the amalgamation of response and ability. It stood for the ability to respond. In that sense, Universal Responsibility is the acceptance of your ability to respond to everything in our universe.

The acceptance of this ability empowers us to humanize and empathize with every other being by awarding them dignity and respect while constantly making us aware of the fact that their actions are solely due to their conditioning and circumstances and are not about us. This empowerment offers to us a choice; a choice to retaliate or to respond and this choice to me is freedom.