Did Malcolm X Really Free

Freedom is defined by the dictionary as “the quality or state of being free”. The internet defines Freedom as “the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action”. However, it is really hard for us to feel truly free, because we live in a world, in which we are slaves of the same daily routine and we don’t dedicate time to do things we enjoy and we consider rewarding. We work, we go to school, we buy food, we go to sleep etc. and we get trapped in the same routine. Under these circumstances, it is very hard to enjoy and feel free most of the hours in a week. Sometimes the society in which we live we cannot achieve being free human beings because we spend the day doing things that many times we don’t want to be doing. Even going to college do not guarantee that we are going to live completely free. As a matter of fact, millions of people go to college and then realize that they don’t want to pursue their career and start looking for jobs in other fields to feel “truly free”. Malcolm X, one of the most powerful leaders of the Black America during the 1960s, found freedom while he was in jail, and show us the lesson of finding our own freedom spending our time wisely.

Malcolm's childhood was affected by being orphaned in his early life.

During the mid-20th century, the United States faced the biggest racist persecution of the history. When Malcolm was 14 during 8th grade, he dropped out of school because a teacher told him that practicing the laws were not a realistic goal for an African American. After he dropped out of school, he started working in different jobs while he lived with his sister. Years later when he was 20 years, he was convicted of robbery in 1946. As a result, he was not able to express on writing and became frustrated when he tried to write letters because he used too many slang terms. During his time in jail, Malcolm X felt he found his self-freedom because he was able to invest time in himself and to become more

educated.
Malcolm thought “he had never been so truly free in his life" until he went to jail for 7 years. During this period of time, he found the opportunity of start doing something he enjoyed and became passionate about reading. Malcolm's reading passion started in Charlestown Prison when Bimbi (a fellow imamate) first made him feel envy and curious of his stock of knowledge. But, when Malcolm tried to read his books but he couldn't understand a lot of vocabularies. Then, he decided to write a dictionary and this helped him to improve his handwriting and to learn new words. Norfork prison colony’s library had a huge and varied book collection. "Any college library would have been lucky to get that collection". The Inmates were encouraged to rehabilitate by taking classes and participate in debates. Malcolm took advantage of this opportunity and instead of wasting his time, he decided to educate himself during his years in prison. Malcom's brain was lit by the spark of knowledge helping him to become a passionate reader. Reading books, opened a new world for Malcolm and helped him in his rehabilitation process. After being in jail, Malcolm realized the importance of reading and education and he started using his time wisely by doing rewarding things.
For me, freedom not only means being free of taking our own decisions and doing what we want but also it means being able to do things we enjoy and things that are rewarding. Malcolm achieved the true freedom when he started doing something he liked and considered rewarding. He knew he needed to read more in order to be able to write more clearly and concisely. I think everybody should do things that make them feel free. Working in a place we like, going to the places we like and doing things we enjoy. When we don't do these things, we are not truly free, even though we are not precisely "constraint in choice or action". This doesn’t mean that there will not be circumstances in life, in which we do things that we don’t like. With this, I mean that our goal should be feeling truly free at one point of our life. But like all things in life, we cannot achieve a goal in a blink of an eye. We must work hard every day towards the goal of spending our time doing things we enjoy and things that we consider rewarding.