We have by our Commission, bearing date (2nd April) 1878, given and granted upon you full power and authority to emancipate and discharge from their servitude any of the convicts under your superintendence.
What would those first convicts of Australia have felt upon learning of this? To be set free: Peace. Weightlessness. Potential.
But there are things other than incarceration that man can be bound down by. Things like bitterness, resentment, anger. Feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, insignificance. They can be self-taught or other-inflicted, with us for a lifetime or recently acquired. Whatever they are, the reality is, when we choose to find meaning and healing, when we choose to dig deeper and discover the origin of these things preventing us from truly living, and when we choose to learn to deal with the implications of them in our present life, it is there that we begin to experience freedom. The difference between those convicts and us is that we have a choice to find our freedom.
The darkness has seen a great light,
A new dawn of hope to keep up the fight.
So set these shackles free
And let me just be me.
I'm not a number, not a mask,
I just want life to be my task.
Here I stand pleasantly by a spring.
Oh! for the joy it makes me sing.
In this land of peace
Where my suff'ring did cease
There's no more shouting, no more pain,
And now I can live my life again.
I am free.
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