And then, I picked up my pocketbook version of The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. I was hoping for some words of wisdom that would also resonate with me. Of course there was, the great Gibran never fails:
Freedom
And an orator said, "Speak to us of Freedom."
And he answered:
At the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom,
Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he slays them.
Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the citadel I have seen the freest among you wear their freedom as a yoke and a handcuff.
And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfillment.
You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief,
But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.
And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding have fastened around your noon hour?
In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle the eyes.
And what is it but fragments of your own self you would discard that you may become free?
If it is an unjust law you would abolish, that law was written with your own hand upon your own forehead.
You cannot erase it by burning your law books nor by washing the foreheads of your judges, though you pour the sea upon them.
And if it is a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed.
For how can a tyrant rule the free and the proud, but for a tyranny in their own freedom and a shame in their won pride?
And if it is a care you would cast off, that care has been chosen by you rather than imposed upon you.
And if it is a fear you would dispel, the seat of that fear is in your heart and not in the hand of the feared.
Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape.
These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling.
And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light.
And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.
--
Therein lay the key to my essay. I read the words and began thinking that true freedom didn't exist because we prevented its existence through our many worldly shackles. The reason I was unable to come up with anything to write about myself was because of all the labels I had imposed upon myself: "somewhat intelligent" "middle class" "average" and on and on and on. What I wanted was to write an essay about how those labels didn't mean anything in the end because they said nothing about me. Sounds rather trite, and appropriately dramatic for a teenager, seven years hence but there was and is truth in these words. Those labels, that part of my existence was abundantly clear through any college application. So I wrote instead something along the lines of: "I am not just a Muslim, not just a Pakistani, not just a women..." etc. I don't think I added in the phrase that "I am greater than the sum of my parts" though now I wish I had!
I didn't want some admissions officer to only see those things in me, I wanted them to see a person, an individual who didn't know quite yet what she wanted to be or how she wanted to get there because the journey was only just beginning. Good thing I got accepted into college on the basis of that "finding myself" essay...
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