Liberation

Passover is a Jewish festival derived from the book of Exodus in the Bible. In Exodus, God visits upon Egypt 10 plagues as punishment for the enslavement of the Israelites. The tenth plague is the most fatal - God causes every firstborn child in the land of Egypt to die in a single night. However, he spares his chosen people, the Israelites, by instructing them (via Moses) to leave lamb's blood on the doorposts of their homes. God then "passed over" each of these homes. The devastation caused by the Tenth Plague finally convinced the Pharoah to release the Israelites from bondage, though he would later change his mind and pursue them.

Liberation is an interesting term to me because it can be applied more or less accurately to experiences of all scales. Simultaneously the word can describe pivotal events in the history of a people (such as in Exodus) and seemingly inconsequential experiences in a single person's lifetime. Many of us have experienced, or perhaps still seek, some sort of liberation (I know I'm looking forward to a certain kind of liberation in college.) But what ties together this wide span of experiences under the common banner of "liberation?" It seems to me that the key to liberation is self-determination, by which I mean an individual or group's absolute sovereignty over the direction of their own fate. At times this liberation may be illusory - we are all, after all, slaves to the experiences that have made us. But it is central to the experience of having something we can recognize as a "will", a desire to be or do something, that we be able to express that will, however limited it may be. The experience of one's will being unimpeded - or, in political situations, the experience of a class or people's will being expressed fully - is for me the true meaning of liberation.