Freedom

I am my liberty.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Surrounded 24/7 by unapologetic victims, it's easy for us to forget that freedom is everyone's birthright.

For celebrants, Christmas is the season of charity and compassion—or ought to be.

But both virtues assume victims require our philanthropic gestures, when, in fact, they're free: free to resist injustice; free to work for change; free to run away; free to cheat, rob and steal, if need be; free to rebel; free to displace you, or me, or whoever oppresses them.

Journalists, priests and fundraisers prey upon our compassion at Christmas, just as retailers prey upon our guilt and greed.

They can't help themselves.

But no one preys upon our connate freedom.

It takes an Existentialist to do that; to remind us we're born free and remain free every moment of our lives; to remind us no one is born a victim—or even becomes one unwillingly. 

We choose the mantles we wear.

"Compassion refers to the arising in the heart of the desire to relieve the suffering of all beings," the guru Ram Dass said.

"Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you," the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre said.

Remember compassion this Christmas; but remember freedom, too.