NOTES FROM OUTSIDE

Freedom of speech is expressly protected in Universal declaration of Human Rights. Article 19 states that: “everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”.

As I settled into finally getting my blog set up I asked myself this question. Do we really have freedom of speech? At first I got excited Then waves of thoughts flow through my mind. What should my first post be? Just an introduction? One of my random thoughts? And If it’s one of my  unfiltered thoughts I probably would be picked up in my house seconds after posting, sitting in the police car like “OMG I shouldn’t have” and the next minute I am calling my folks to bail me out. Since its a new year and I am trying to maintain world peace as my humanly contribution to the world, I decided to go with the safer option, the piece I wrote about my birthday. 

I still had loads of questions. After my first blog post, what will I subsequently write ? Would I write about politics, topical issues, women, racism, social misconstruct? Bear in mind writing has never being an issue to me. I can go hours writing on various topics of interest, my feelings, emotions and everything in between. But for the first time as a writer, I felt stuck. 

This was my first time coming into a public space outside of my A4 sheets, my bulky journal pages, random pieces of papers where I get to express myself in full scale. Speaking on my journal, if you have had an encounter with me, apologises I probably would have cursed you out in one or two of those pages. It’s all love though, just the tough love. 

Putting my writing out into the world feels very wonderful. But now doubts sits within me. Not doubts of being unsure of my writing or my opinions but a different kind. The kind that wonders how my words might land, what they might stir up, what they might change. I feel it could be a major impact on what I write about.  Part of me wants to suppress my writing for a little while until the blessed day I go rouge the way writers eventually do. My favourite part of reading, when writers spill the beans and go rouge. I will be on my device cheering them up “let them know!, We need more smoke and fire, can we have this all year long?”. I love a bit of fire burning up high. 

Despite loving the smoke from other writers. I still carry my own rhetorical questions about putting my writing on a public space. Am I coming off too hard? Will this group or that group read this and don’t get offend? Will I still have everything intact for me once my thought are out in the open? It’s really not that I care about what people say (enters my modern era). But I do care about what close family and friends think. I never take their words and advice for granted. I am not going to act blind and follow the new trend of selective carelessness. They are right, but healthy constructive criticism exists. You could slowly be swing towards self-destruct while you’ll be gassed up by social media  and by its algorithms of “don’t care what people say, do what you want,  do you, its your life”. The new era of motivational and wellness coaches. But life has taught me that two feelings and two truths can coexist peacefully. My wrong and right , my opinions, my point of view along side the other person’s wrong and right, their opinions and their point of view. 

The entire world has quickly changed into “I don’t care, I will say this I feel”. But wait, What about the next person that doesn’t feel the same way you feel? This is the same world that preaches love and unity. How do we hold space for both to exist peacefully? I know we can pick and choose, follow our instinct and move however we see fit. I genuinely want to know because I am a little bit confused. The same world says “you can’t please everybody” and still the same world says “be your brothers keeper”. I think the phrase being your brother’s keeper is from the bible but isn’t it simply saying we should look out for one another? So why does everything keep contradicting itself ? 

To this day, I still so much laugh about one of the quotes often associated with Idi Amin, the former military dictator of Uganda. “There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech.” In an unsettling way, he was right. Very much right. freedom after speech can’t be guaranteed because we have seen it time after time freedom disappearing into thin air after the speech is made. You could get punched in the face, dragged to court, or quietly pushed out of spaces you once belonged to. I think the laws and human rights charters should just say: look, realistically there is absolutely no freedom of speech. But we will play it cool and what ever you get after the freedom is on you. I think that will be better than driving people into the ditch some never make it out from. 

What a world we live in. 

What a beautiful world we indeed live in. 

PS. I don’t agree with military dictatorship or the inhuman actions that surround it.