"Massah an' dem" might as well have just let us loose in the cotton pickin' fields yesterday. Because the way we conduct ourselves sometimes is too reminiscent of a people whose shackles (real and metaphorical) were only just thrown off and who are running free and wild through the bushes, uncertain about their identities, the best direction for them to go or simply what to do with themselves or their newly-acquired time and status.
Even though there may have been no plan when the shackles came off, it was fairly evident that we were 'massah's' source of economic prosperity, and we did pick up on the fact that whatever we did with our time once freed should probably have something to do with economic wealth and the acquisition of things. And so getting money and having things became a central goal, knowingly or unknowingly.
Until emancipation, we hadn't really had an opportunity to have money or things. Once we did, it became almost instinctive for us to move through the brand new world like bulls in a china shop, knocking things out of place without even noticing, breaking things up, oblivious to the crashing sounds around us, to get the things and money we were supposed to have in abundance once free.
Now, we are accustomed to not being accustomed to having things, and it shows in our frivolous expenditure of time and money. We are surface-oriented. Meaningfulness beyond the visual is often too far a stretch for our general tolerance. We obtain, listen to, retain and reproduce nonsense. We believe wholeheartedly in nonsense - any old thing we're given or told we just suck it up and regurgitate and perpetuate it.
Our human depravity, having lasted for so long, makes us live and act as though we are in eternal desperation, clinging to things we are told are true, real or good, without the presence or development of a liberated mindset to understand it for ourselves, even before we can understand it for what it actually is.
Our enslavement jumped from being physically bound to being mentally bound, and, like a true mental illness, it appears to be hereditary. We have it and we don't know. And we don't get treatment, because no one identifies it for what it is. When it can be identified, we are embarrassed by it or ignore it and call it something else. And we just pass it on from one person, family, and generation to the next, never acknowledging it for what it is. It is sustained mental bondage.
It is the reason why we can gain freedom from shackles and independence from the European motherland, be in charge of our own destiny, take control politically, socially and economically, yet never be in control of ourselves. We cannot shake this thing that is the same norm for countries of like people who have traveled paths the same as or similar to ours. And it's not just because of economics.
Certainly, if someone steals your physical wealth, it leaves you economically deprived. But it seems as if no matter what you've done, even after starting with a clean slate, you still can't get it together, because you don't recognize that something more important than your material possessions and rights to them was taken. Your mental and emotional wealth were stolen, too, and those resources take a much longer time to be restored, if in fact they ever can be.
Even after adopting an entire system of government, you cannot enjoy your separation from the world to which you are bound, in spite of the religious, political, academic or social constructs you transfer from the possessor country to yourself.
You cannot enjoy your separation, because it is illusory. You've never separated yourself from the stronghold of a bound mentality, and transplanting religion, policy, education and social norms will not remove the vestiges of enslaved conditions. You began as a country that didn't really know what it wanted to be, so it adapted a template of the only thing it knew - a template that would serve only to perpetuate the experiences of slavery.
You could not and cannot restore your mental wealth and well-being without reconditioning your thought patterns. Otherwise, you have created and will continue to create a system of institutions and formalities which have no real purpose. Everything will become symbolic of nothing. And, if you don't recognize it, it is not far flung from a lost cause, because you don't even know what's missing. You don't see that the way you think as well as the things you focus on, the decades and centuries of indoctrination, have set you on a collision course with yourself.
When you are the target and you are the bomb, there is no escape. If you can't find a way to separate yourself from the thing that can annihilate you, you will remain bound to it, because being attached to it keeps you alive, while you're hoping for something different - something better - and hoping that the explosive is never triggered.
Bob Marley first sang it for you 34 years ago. You sway your head to and fro when you hear his voice, maybe take a draw when the song hits a high note and you "feel" it. But do you get it? Do you understand the insidiousness and tenacity of mental slavery? Do you understand that nothing you say or do will ever matter, unless you free yourself of the psychological controls that linger with, within and around you?
You put on a light show up to the sky every year to show the world you are free, but you are not. Because you have never accepted the primary tenet of freedom - responsibility - for yourself, your world, your future.
Freedom, real freedom, is extremely expensive. You will forego many things, many emotional, physical and financial things to have it and to keep it. Until you accept this cost of freedom, the burden of true and free living, the sacrifice of making what anyone thinks of you, what anyone thinks you should have or thinks you should be as irrelevant as possible, you will never understand or appreciate real freedom.
You cannot be free without being responsible, chiefly to yourself, for your actions and for your words. You cannot be free just by singing the Redemption Song. You cannot be free by lighting firecrackers. You cannot be free by waving a flag. You cannot be free by singing an anthem or reciting a pledge.
When you accept that freedom is your own and greatest responsibility for the rest of your human existence, then you are able to be free. And you cannot be independent without being free. You can celebrate a political divorce from a mother country, but it does not automatically equate to freedom. In some ways, it makes you less free, because it makes you more responsible. Being in control, being independent, being in charge of yourself, is accepting and embracing the fullness of that responsibility.
When you've freed yourself and your mind of the controls placed upon you by others and by yourself, then you can take control. When you take control of your personal freedom, then you can be a free country. When you are a free country, as represented by the strength and endurance of your thought patterns and activities, then you can be free from your dependence on the thinking and controls of others. And when you're free of externally-imposed mental controls, then you can truly be independent.
July 10, 1973 did not make us free. It gave us political independence from Britain. Being free is the responsibility of each individual and begins with each individual, and it is a permanent state of mind as well as body, which requires significant self-appreciation, self-awareness and self-love.
o Nicole Burrows is an academically-trained economist. She can be contacted via Facebook at Facebook.com/NicoleBurrows.

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