The Effort of Each
“Freedom is not a gift received from a State or a leader but a possession to be won every day by the effort of each and the union of all.” ALBERT CAMUS · BREAD AND FREEDOM
Today is the fourteenth of July, the day France remembers a crowd that pulled down a fortress and changed the world. The right day, then, for a sentence Camus spoke to a hall full of workers at a labor exchange in 1953.
For a whole month, in June, we studied freedom, and we tended to picture it as something personal: the open field, the wall you cross alone. Camus now completes the thought and hands it back to the crowd. Nothing granted from above can be counted on, because what is given can be taken back. Freedom that lasts has to be made from below, and it cannot be made by one person.
This is where the freedom of June and the solidarity of July turn out to be the same thing. My freedom and yours are not competing for room. They are one project, held up by many hands. The fortress did not fall to a lone hero. It fell to a union of the ordinary, each doing a small part together.
It is why the private search for freedom always, in the end, opens onto other people. You cannot stay free alone. Someone kept the door open for you, and someone is depending on you to keep it open for them.
Do your part in some freedom larger than your own. Add your small effort to a common one.
