Last week I watched a programme about the Thailand-Burma rail line that the Japanese forced POWs to build during World War II. This event was made famous through the film "Bridge on the River Kwai", but apparently the film depicted one of the least oppressive sections of the rail construction for the POWs, relatively speaking. The reason for this was that the bridge was obviously being built over a large river and near a site where the Japanese were able to transport and stock building materials quite easily. This made the lot of the POWs working on that section much easier, as they were not subjected to the same physical labor as POWs on other parts of the line.
Building the line was a remarkable achievement. Six thousand miles of rail line was built in only 16 months. However, this was only achieved due to the ruthless and inhumane treatment the POWs suffered at the hands of their Japanese captors. Regardless of the weather or the condition of their health, they were forced to dig, break and carry rocks and stones and do a variety of other physically demanding jobs, all of which gradually broke them down both physically and mentally. Each day, POWs in their hundreds died, or were killed for being too sick to work.
On the programme, one surviving POW was asked how he survived the brutality of his internment and forced labour. He tearfully replied that it was purely his hatred of his Japanese captors that gave him the will to survive and not be personally conquered by them. He then recalled the day the POWs were liberated and his newfound sense of freedom. "I was free to say 'No!'" he said. His words rang in my head and I realized that that is the definition of freedom - being able to say no when you so please.
How small that freedom seems when we have it. How for granted we take it, so much so that we often put ourselves in positions where we willingly give it up - jobs, relationships, friendships, contractual agreements, religious beliefs - and we usually don't even realize that we are doing so! We justify our actions by convincing ourselves that we are making our own choices, which is indeed freedom, but sometimes that is the last time we assert our freedom with regard to that choice. That is not necessarily a bad thing, because sometimes giving up that one freedom leads to other benefits that can bring untold happinesses, like in relationships where we negotiate in numerous ways the terms of the surrender of our freedom, hoping that down the road the benefits of that surrender will be realized. It's when we give up the freedom to say no and inextricably tie ourselves up in situations where saying no brings feelings of guilt, unhappiness and other unfortunate consequences that most concern me.
Other people only have the power over us that we allow them to have. I have never stayed in jobs, for example, where my bosses have assumed that their positions give them limitless power over me and where I am not in a position to say no. To have stayed in such jobs would have made me a prisoner of work and have given undeserved authority to my bosses.
I am less assertive about my freedom when it comes to family and personal relationships. My freedom to say no is eclipsed by my need to be loved.
Dion Marc Delport
18 April 2006