Thinking about the power of seeing one another, Sawubona came back to mind.
When using a sentence like seeing the other, people can mean that they’ll meet. But they can also mean that they have become so aware of the other, that they gained a deeper understanding of the other person. That can be that there is a real understanding of what the person described which leads to seeing that person in a different light.
This is where Sawubona is more than a greeting that says, “I see you.” The ability to see the other becomes an obligation as much as an opportunity to be present to the potential of seeing one another and of seeing one another’s potential.
A beautiful question to ask oneself in such a moment is: “How do I have to be as a human being for someone else to be free?”
While freedom can’t be taken away from us, it can be given.
But giving freedom is different from contributing to someone else to be free.
There often is a tendency to assume that it is helpful to give full freedom to someone else. For example, by inviting them to do as they like, or suggesting that one will not intervene. These efforts are well meant and at the same time the worst way to help someone else to be free.
When people come together, they always impact one another. People react to one another. Giving “all the freedom” is just as impossible as removing the impact people have on one another. It ends up often being the most intense limitation one can create.
That’s because receiving freedom also comes with the desire to do the same for the other. Which is a way to dissolve the relationship. Something that isn’t possible either whenever people find themselves in the same space. They’ll thus most often revert to either not taking the freedom or reducing it to its smallest possible entity. Some may choose to indeed take it all, and thus impose themselves on others.
That’s what makes it so interesting to find one’s answer to the question “How do I have to be as a human being for someone else to be free?”
It most often starts with sharing respective limitations. Freedom then opens up in the remaining space.
