Learning the Language of Freedom's Call

Do you hear what I hear?

By the time you’re reading this, I’m approximately 2,452 miles away from my writing desk, sitting in the sands of a California beach, wondering why we chose to live in a place where the air hurts our faces for half the year.

It was with this trip on the horizon that I got to spend time thinking about this week’s f-word. It’s a tricky one; a pro at getting politicized and religionized; a concept that means very different things to very different people; a word that has a way of taking from some as much as it gives to others.

Freedom.

What’s ironic is that it wasn’t until I started studying this word that the entire f-word series started to make sense.

So, let’s begin by heading to the best place in the world to learn about freedom: North Korea.

Why this matters

We’re going to talk more about Yeonmi Park in a bit. For now, all you need to know is that she's a North Korean defector, human rights advocate, and all-around badass who taught me more about freedom in a week than I had absorbed in all my previous years on this blue ball.

She writes,

I read to fill my mind and to block out the bad memories. But I found that as I read more, my thoughts were getting deeper, my vision wider, and my emotions less shallow. When you have more words to describe the world, you increase your ability to think complex thoughts… I was starting to realize that you can’t really grow and learn unless you have a language to grow within.¹

A language to grow within — that’s it. That’s the whole purpose of the f-word series, and this freedom piece in particular.  

The first step to you embodying more freedom in your life is understanding, adopting, and developing the language of it. As it is with training your fears or rescuing your failures or injecting fun into your existence.

Language is the raw material of change. And change is the engine of freedom.

The 7 Words Tattooed on Freedom’s Arm

Ok, hi. I’m dropping in this addition after writing everything that follows because it felt like there was still important context in my head that didn’t make it onto the page (it’s literally my job to not let this happen, so…). 

Freedom is the foundation of mental health. 

Or at least it has been for me. With the words that follow, I’m hoping you’ll find where the gaps are in your foundation. Where have you been misled about what freedom means? And, hopefully, how can filling this gap or that one help you think and act and speak and risk with more youness than ever before?

Mystery

I wasn’t dreaming of freedom when I escaped from North Korea. I didn’t even know what it meant to be free.²

Most of us learn what it means to be free by experiencing its opposite. We find ourselves in a situation, relationship, or way of thinking and reach a point where we admit to wanting something different.

The problem, or at least what seems like a problem at first, is that we have no idea what different could be. For a second, we fear that different might actually be worse. So, we freeze and accept our stuckness as an unchangeable fact of life when, in reality, the unknowableness is a good thing.

The mystery is an invitation to search. It’s the question that gets us paying attention.

And so, when Park, even as a little girl, started to realize this was not the life she wanted, it subconsciously prepared her for the next word.

Exposure

Unlike North Koreans who grew up along the borders, my mother had no exposure to the outside world or foreign ideas.

Freedom is a thing we have to be exposed to. I know some would like to believe it’s built into us like sex and sweet tooths, but I don’t think that’s true.

It’s why dictators work so hard to ban books and silence troublemakers. They know that inside people are all the ingredients for explosive revolution. But without a spark, without a trigger, those ingredients simply sit and eventually expire out of usefulness.

This is also one of the benefits that’s come out of social media age were in. More than ever, anything seems possible because of our exposure to everything.

Park’s exposure was a byproduct of her times. Growing up in what came to be known as the Jangmadang (“market”) generation, people smuggled in her freedom triggers: Chinese commercials, South Korean TV shows, Japanese video games, and Hollywood bootlegs.

The film that changed my life was Titanic… I was amazed that [people] were willing to die for love… that they could choose their own destinies… this pirated movie gave me my first small taste of freedom.
— Yeonmi Park

The unhappier you are with your current situation, the greater your duty is to expose yourself to new possibilities. This is how you embrace the mystery and unwrap the next word.

Exchange

In a way I was buying my own freedom.

Freedom requires that you pay an external, visible price. That you exchange a now for a next. I don’t know why this is, but I’ve seen it again and again, including in my own little life.

It usually begins by giving up a familiarity, like a hometown. It can also mean people and things and even smaller freedoms.

One of the most freeing, and most difficult, things I did with my life was leaving the religion I grew up in. I used to say that I lost a lot with that decision (belonging, a career, purpose). But the word I use now is exchanged.

I traded many things for many other things, and I'm glad I did. I'm freer than before insofar as that my decisions are now fully my own. There's less restraint in every area of my life, the freedom from part of the equation.

You’ll know what this is when the time comes, the “price.” You always do. Freedom doesn’t mince words. It demands what it demands, and it’s up to us whether or not we’re willing to pay it.

It felt like a good place for a GIF break. Ok, back to reading!

Belief

We were willing to believe something new if it meant surviving.

As Park made her way out of North Korea into China, around to Mongolia, and finally across to South Korea, each new place brought with it new beliefs. About what was true in the world, what was possible for her life, and who she was becoming.

The freedom you experience will never surpass the freedom you can believe. All woo-woo aside, your mind is the gatekeeper. Exposure is unlocking the door. Belief is walking through it.

I mean, this whole gosh darn Substack is about our minds and bending them into beautiful, useful works of art. So much, if not all, of the outside change we want to make in our lives starts upstairs. Freedom is no different.

And if belief is too big a word with too much baggage for you to associate with freedom, then try this next word.

Trust

It’s not easy to give up a worldview that is built into your bones and imprinted on your brain like the sound of your own father’s voice. Besides, if everything I had been taught before was a lie, how could I know these people weren’t lying, too? It was impossible to trust anyone in authority.

Freedom is a people word. Either we're working to get away from people who make us less free or working to get closer to people who exhibit the kinds of freedom we want.

Trust is how we accept freedom into our lives. Kind of like belief, except it's people-focused rather than idea-focused.

Park had a list as long as the world is round of reasons not to trust people. And yet she did because she understood that people were the conduit. The ones who helped her escape furthered her freedom. As did the ones who taught her, and fed her, and gave her a platform.

There’s a who to your freedom. Probably many of them. They’re not always friendly, but they are on your side.

Practice 

After five years of practicing being free, I know now that my favorite color is spring green and my hobby is reading books and watching documentaries. I’m not copying other people’s answers anymore.

Everyone thinks freedom is experienced as this sort of arrival. Like a plane landing at your destination where you unbuckle your seatbelt, grab your carry-on, and march out to your new life.

It’s not.

Anyone who’s tried self-employment or left an abusive partner or moved to a new country can tell you freedom is an exercise in perseverance. It takes work to stay free. To live within the newfound freedoms.

Freedom is not a point in time where before that point you were enslaved and after that point you are free. Freedom is something that you practice every day.
— James Altucher

The practice of freedom is choosing yourself. Your preferences. Your benefits. Your answers. Every single day. Over everything else you’ve been told to want and need and chase.

You cannot be free without being selfish.

If that last bit makes you uncomfortable, good. This last word is especially for you.

Release

In the morning, I made my decision. I would write my story fully and completely… As soon as I decided to tell my secret, I felt free for the first time ever.

The last hurdle to full freedom is a release. The way I like to think of it is as an internal exchange.

The outside price makes sense. Leaving a crappy job, moving overseas, selling your autographed collection of John Candy memorabilia. The physical act towards freedom excites us because we can see it. We can feel the momentum building.

But just as important, and likely more so, is the inside piece. The stuff we have to let go of, the truths we have to tell, the fears we have to voice aloud.

You can be free on the outside and not on the inside. Don’t do that to yourself. You deserve the whole thing.

The 8^th Word

What amazed me most about Yeonmi Park’s story was her refusal to settle. In China, she had consistent shelter and food for the first time ever. It wasn’t a great situation (i.e., living with her human trafficker), yet it was still worlds apart from her daily fight to stay alive in North Korea. She knew freedom meant something more than survival.

In Mongolia, she earned her own money, lived in a safe space with other women, and had achieved a level of autonomy unheard of where she came from. But still, she knew freedom was more than stability.

In South Korea, the impossible came true. She studied her way into university, shared her story on TV shows, and earned enough money to travel internationally. For most of her life, she dared not even dream such dreams. And now they were her every day. She was starting to see the truth.

Freedom is expansion.

Every freedom you seek will inevitably, at some point, invite you into another level of freedom you never imagined before. You couldn't even if you tried. Your perspective wasn't ready. Exposure comes in waves, for our own sake.

Your mind wants to invite you to be free in new ways.

But it’s looking for signs that you’re ready. Evidence that you’re willing to embrace the mysteries, welcome the unfamiliar, open to new ideas and able to trust the messengers of them. That you show up for yourself and will foot the bill for a new life when the time comes (even if a bit begrudgingly at first).

Remember that it’s for you. All of it is.

You wouldn’t hear freedom’s call if it wasn’t.

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Challenge #4: Freewriting on Freedom

1. From In Order To Live by Yeonmi Park, pages 229-230.

2. Where to read more from her book if you’re curious: mystery (page 3), exposure (34), exchange (180), belief (185), trust (215), practice (217), release (264).