What is freedom? It is the moment-by-moment experience of not being run by one’s own reactive mechanisms. Kevin McLeod, Freedom & Choice

This week because of the holiday only the SOC IFG met. In this session we focused on freedom. We started our discussion by listening to two songs: Nina Simone´s “I Wish I Knew What It Was Like to Be Free” and George Michael´s, “Freedom”. Each song talks about freedom from the perspective of someone who is restricted by the way society views and oppresses them. In the songs the singer is insisting upon breaking free of those socially imposed restrictions. As people of color the ways in which society views us (through the lens of white supremacy) has dire consequences adversely affecting how we are able to be and live in this world. People of color are constantly confronted with the inherent injustice of our societies by the covert and overt discrimination we face.

We looked at how, by using the tools of mindfulness, those negative experiences can become opportunities for us to find freedom. By connecting to the powerful emotions they provoke we can move beyond mere reaction to creating our own space to explore and define who we are and what we want to be. We learned freedom isn’t about doing whatever you want or even having unlimited choices. We learned that freedom is having the space to see the possibilities of who you and the world around us could be. Possibilities that the world as it exists cannot yet imagine.

Enjoy these tracks and as always stay tuned, stay interested and stay awake.

Nina Simone, “I Wish I Knew What How It Would Feel to Be Free”

George Michael, “Freedom”