Freedom

Yesterday morning, while I was reading on the sofa, my partner was listening to the radio in the kitchen. These days, the news can be of two kinds: either you’re hearing about Brexit, or you’re actively avoiding it. He’d gone for the first type. The programme centred on the previous night’s celebrations across the UK. Freedom! God Save the Queen! Fuck off, Brussels!

In the videos I’ve seen on social media, the word ‘freedom’ is repeated. Not surprising: it’s a beautiful one. Even dictators are fond of using it to mask their actions. The main argument for Brexit was being autonomous and independent again, not subject to the rules of Brussels like the past forty-seven years. Brexiteers long for the good old days. I don’t share their point of view, but I’ve no alternative than accepting it. Although for the age of many of the interviewees, they never knew a world without Brussels.

I happened to be visiting Madrid when the Anti-Austerity Movement in Spain took Puerta de Sol (Madrid’s main square) for two weeks in 2011. Added to the exquisiteness of the spring evenings in Spain, the cause was just, it resonated with me and deeply affected many nearby. External and internal factors had come together to shape an unforgettable moment. You could sense the hope in the air, the possibility of change, even the faith, a word easily scorned there for its Catholic connotations.

As we left Puerta del Sol, one of my friends bumped into an acquaintance who had been very involved in the previous days’ activities. With an already well-established life in Scotland, I looked at the situation curiously, trying to disentangle when and where it had started. I was listening to this new participant attentively when he said something that I haven’t forgotten, ‘This is extraordinary, similar to when the Berlin Wall came down.’

The comment was fairly inaccurate but also profoundly human. In that moment I learnt how much we need to feel that we’re having an impact, that we’re leaving a mark on this world. We can plan and envisage short, medium and long-term plans. But the perspective of the future also includes our death, the understanding that one day we won’t be here. We are the only species who can reflect on its insignificance. And regardless of being true or not, effective or ineffective, we need to find ways to alleviate the burden of our irrelevance.