What does it mean to be free? What I think it means to be free is knowing that people can chase their dreams and goals without fear of people or another force stopping them. My own experience is being a Latino boy raised by a single mother my whole life and having to deal with money issues since I was young. I was not born into a very lucky family, being a son of immigrant parents. I was also the son of an alcoholic—an alcoholic who made me feel as if I were taking the same steps to get to where he was. It felt as if the world was beating me senseless because of who I was born to. I never felt freedom because of these harsh forces going at me, to the point where I felt paralyzed.

I knew I was not born into this world with freedom. I noticed this first when we had to share an apartment with another family when I was young, and this happens constantly in my life. I don’t have anything. I certainly don’t have freedom, as I see other people in everyday life that look like me being killed and mistreated, and whose hopes and dreams are taken and stripped away from them. I want to be successful, where I have so much money… not for me, but for my family who I have seen suffer. I knew this when I stared at the empty white walls of the small room we shared. I knew then what freedom looked like. My freedom looks like being successful enough to get my family into not just one white room but multiple—multiple white rooms where they no longer look at those white walls with sadness but with eagerness to paint and decorate those walls with things they like and things they own.

My mom has had a hard life raising me and my siblings without my dad. Whenever we get a bill, I see her face filled with sadness. My mom is a slave. She slaves away at work for us to have a roof over our heads and the things we need and want. As she grows older and injures herself, she won’t be able to work. So that’s why it’s my purpose in life to be successful so I can finally stop seeing another fake smile from the suffering my mom takes in.  My mom sacrificed to leave her home and her life in her home country. It’s important to me for that not to have been in vain, and to see my family at least once not have that look of fear in their eyes but a look of life. When I finally see that look in my family, then I will know that I have achieved freedom.

I chose to use a still from the film, The Wind Rises, to convey my message. The image I used to do this is the main character, Jiro, looking at he sky. The sky is a symbol of freedom and the representation that people have to work to get their dream. The sky is something limitless, just like the opportunities we have to achieve our dreams no matter the obstacles. Jiro is representing me because his dream his whole life is to make a plane that can fly in that sky he has always looked up at. This aligned with my life goal to get my family, not to the sky necessarily, but a sky where there is wealth for them, where they never have to worry about money again, and where they never miss anything again in their life. But Jiro also has meaning to me as we both worry about our dreams. He is worried that he is never going to be able to get off the ground and reach the sky. I am worried that I am not going to be successful because I am not good enough in school, or that I am going to fail my family just like how my old man did. Jiro and I feel that we are bound to the ground where we are working hard, putting blood, sweat, and tears into our dreams—into our freedom—but that the obstacles in our way seem like they can never let us be in the sky we so long for.