Authenticity and Shared Freedom: When the Fire Spreads
This is for those without a map: people learning to trust the ember they carry, and to find others tending the fire beside them.
✨ Embers — essays, poetry, and cultural works
In Part One of this series, we explored the tension between fate and free will—the age-old question of how to live authentically in a world shaped by forces beyond our control. We traced that question across cultures and wisdom traditions, finding echoes of both surrender and defiance, complexity and clarity, and we ended with a promise: to look beyond the self. To look to moments in history when personal agency ignited into collective fire. We plan on keeping that promise. This part of our Authenticity and Shared Freedom series is for people who weren’t handed a map—people piecing one together from lived experience.
But as we turn toward those histories, something else stirs—a quieter fire, closer to the chest. Because before people march, before movements coalesce, before the chants rise and the structures shake—someone, somewhere, asks: Am I really free?
And then: What am I supposed to do with that question?
What if we begin there?
Note on Voices and Lineages:
In what follows, I draw on wisdom traditions and moments of collective struggle that are not my own inheritance. I offer them with respect and deep gratitude, not as an authority, but as someone learning from their resonance. These histories and teachings belong to living peoples and lineages; here they serve as sparks, reminders that authenticity is never only individual. My reflections are just one thread in a much larger fabric.
SCENE
A small room. Not bare, but quiet. The walls could belong to a rented apartment, a house passed down, or a temporary shelter. A single desk. A dim light. A clutter of open tabs and folded books. A window, closed.
Outside: something uncertain. Maybe sirens. Maybe birds.
The air is still. The world, unpredictable.
Ash sits. Thinking. Not lost, not broken—just quietly burning.
Ember, Ash’s internal reflection, presents as a flickering candle reflected off a nearby window.
THE SPARK
ASH: What even is “authenticity” anymore?
Everything feels staged. Everyone’s signaling. Even silence gets interpreted. When staying safe means blending in, you start editing yourself to survive. After a while, the mask feels like your face.
Am I real if I’m adjusting to survive?
EMBER: You’re real because you’re adapting. Alignment is different.
ASH: Alignment with what? Myself? What if I don’t know who that is anymore?
EMBER: Start with what burns.
ASH: That sounds poetic. It doesn’t help. I need something solid. Real. A map.
EMBER: Not a map. A compass. And you’re not the first to need one…In Māori ways of knowing, they call it whakapapa—genealogy as belonging and duty. You’re not floating alone. You’re part of a lineage, a land, a responsibility. You don’t find yourself. You remember.
ASH: Remember what? I wasn’t raised with that kind of clarity. I inherited static. Conflict.
EMBER: Then you understand why it matters—why people build upon something deeper. The Diné speak of hózhǫ́ —walking in balance and beauty. To be true to yourself isn’t rebellion. It’s restoration.
ASH: But what if I’m out of balance with the world around me? What if walking in truth makes me a target?
EMBER: Then you’re not alone. In Yoruba thought, orí inú—the inner head, seat of vocation and destiny—must be nourished, protected, honored. Authenticity isn’t an accident. It’s a practice.
ASH: …You?
EMBER:. Hardly. I’m not your example; I’m your mirror. The work is yours.
ASH: I’m sorry, I’m having difficulty understanding your examples. They’re new to me.
EMBER: That’s because you are in this land but not of it. You know them from books, but not from blood. It’s a promise to live in alignment—with your own integrity, with the people who formed you, and with those who will inherit what you build. Let me give you an example that will feel more familiar. Think of the white students who joined the Freedom Rides in 1961. They weren’t seeking attention. They risked beatings and jail to keep faith with a promise bigger than themselves. Or, the miners in Harlan County, Kentucky, who struck for months in 1973. Families on the picket lines, hungry but unbroken. Living their truth wasn’t performance, it was survival with dignity. Since it speaks to your direct ancestors, maybe remember the Danes during World War II, ferrying their Jewish neighbors to safety in fishing boats. It wasn’t self-expression. It was authenticity as faithfulness — to community, to conscience.
ASH: So it’s not about “expressing myself” at all. It’s about whether I’m willing to keep faith with the ones who came before, and the ones who’ll come after.
EMBER: They become a spark.
ASH: And when enough sparks catch…?
EMBER: The fire spreads.
THE PATTERN BREAKERS
ASH: So, if authenticity is a spark…what kind of life does it set on fire?
EMBER: The kind built upon patterns. Inherited ones. Expected ones. The kind that says: this is just how it is.
ASH: Maybe the systems are too big. Maybe they’ve already won.
EMBER: They only win when no one breaks the pattern. And people have always broken it—both quietly and loudly. We said we’d turn to moments when fate was rewritten. Not legends but living proofs—each one a small, honest act catching in the dry grass of a ready people.
ASH: Like who? I don’t need legends. I need people who knew what it might cost.
EMBER: Then start here: A woman boards a bus in Montgomery, 1955. She’s tired, yes—but not from work. Tired of the lie. She sits where they say she shouldn’t. She doesn’t move.
Rosa Parks wasn’t alone that day. She was the spark. The pattern was the lie of submission. The bus was the match.
Montgomery, 1955–56: a seated refusal becomes a 381-day boycott—carpools, church basements, kitchen-table logistics—until 1956 when Browder v. Gayle strikes down bus segregation. Authenticity here is the refusal to perform inferiority.
ASH: Truth can be small: a refusal, a pause, a breath that doesn’t apologize.
EMBER: It must be. And when people saw her, they saw themselves. A boycott began. A movement gathered. A myth cracked open.
ASH: But she was arrested. She could have been hurt, or even killed. And still she sat? I don’t think I’m made of that kind of mettle.
EMBER: Risk is part of reality. Not because someone wants to be a symbol—but because they refuse to be machinery anymore. It’s never been just personal freedom. It’s contagious.
ASH: I remember the Salt March—people walking to the sea, breaking a law just to touch what belonged to them.
EMBER: Exactly. Not violence. Not shouting. Just refusal — thousands walking in alignment, not with one person’s truth, but with each other.
March–April 1930: thousands walked nearly 240 miles to the coastal town of Dandi and broke the British salt monopoly. A handful of salt becomes a wave of refusal — villagers across India made their own salt, filled jails, and defied an empire together.
They weren’t just marching toward freedom. They were becoming it. They rewrote what was possible by walking into what was forbidden. And they did it together—because they had to. Freedom is shared.
ASH: I’m not a marcher. I’m not Rosa Parks. I’m not leading a movement.
EMBER: So what? Parks was Parks. The marchers were the marchers. You are you. There is no other you. Truth spreads in small acts—a whisper, a stance, a refusal. Especially when you don’t know how the story ends.
WILDFIRE
ASH: So once the spark catches—once the pattern is broken—what happens next?
EMBER: The air changes. People start breathing differently. Old myths start to fall apart. And suddenly, others begin to speak their truths out loud.
We were silent before. We are silent after. Such is the nature of fire. It doesn’t just reduce—it reveals what was under the surface.
ASH: Give me more than metaphors. I want to see it.
EMBER: Then look to South Africa. For decades, apartheid held power through violence, fear, and silence. But truth wouldn’t stay buried. Voices rose—some now famous, most not. Every act of defiance was a spark; the fire spread across classrooms, kitchens, churches, prisons—poems, songs, family stories—until the structure couldn’t hold.
From Soweto’s student uprising in 1976 through the early 1990s, unions, townships, pulpits, and songs carried the ember toward a negotiated end of apartheid and the first multiracial elections. Nelson Mandela emerged as a symbol, but he would have been only a prisoner without the millions who refused to be erased. Authenticity here is refusing to erase yourself—insisting the story name you correctly, human.
ASH: I’m no leader. I’m not Mandela.
EMBER: [Slowly] So what? Mandela was Mandela. [Firmly] You are you! The point isn’t to be a symbol — it’s to practice refusal in your own life. Truth multiplies when many people act, not when one person is elevated.
The fire takes time. People get tired. Some get burned. Fire clears, but it scorches too. Some lose jobs, homes, freedom, family. Some lose their lives. And still, what emerges is never the same. Freedom isn’t a destination; it’s a reckoning. A practice.
At Standing Rock—2016–17: prayer camps, wintered lodges, and a river’s name carried through courts and headlines. Authenticity here is treaty memory made visible. Relationship as resistance.
Culture carries fire, too. You can ban a book, and someone will quote it from memory. You can arrest a singer, and the song survives. You can whitewash a monument, and the story comes back in sidewalk chalk.
Authenticity isn’t always loud. It lingers; it multiplies—passed like a torch, hand to hand, breath to breath. When comfort returns and the flame dims, we remember—then we remember together. Fire isn’t only for burning down. It’s for warming, for lighting the way, for gathering when the next choice comes. And another is always coming—closer than you think.
THE THRESHOLD
ASH: It’s strange. After all this—after everything I’ve remembered, everything I’ve seen—I still don’t know what to do.
EMBER: You’re not supposed to. Not yet. This has been leading you to the edge, not across it. Don’t just sit—stay. With the discomfort. With the tension. With the knowing. That’s the beginning of any honest decision.
ASH: But people made choices. Rosa. The marchers. Mandela. They moved.
EMBER: I said stay with the tension. The discomfort will move you
ASH: What is this—this stillness, this pressure in my chest?
EMBER: It’s the threshold—where everything you’ve absorbed starts to weigh in. Where freedom stops being abstract and starts being yours to shape. Where silence isn’t passive anymore—it’s potential.
ASH: After this, there’s no going back—right?
EMBER: Back? No. And that’s not something to fear. That’s how you know it’s real.
ASH: I want to act—honestly. Not out of panic. Because I mean it.
EMBER: Then see the moment. You’ll know it not by certainty—but by alignment: when your values, your truth, and your next breath move in the same direction.
ASH: My next breath? But I don't know where I’m going.
EMBER: Breathe and start where you are. Move with what you have. Build your plane while flying it. Not alone. Never alone. Remember the stories. Look for the others. You’re not the only one holding a torch.
For now, try this: write three names—someone you come from, someone who walks with you now, someone who’ll inherit your choice. Hold them as you listen. Then ask yourself: what part is mine to carry? What can I give from where I already stand? This is not about self-improvement; it’s about remembering that freedom is carried together.
Tend the ember you carry, keep watch for the others, and let the room fill slowly with warmth. The distance between your breath and the world outside is already smaller than it was. When you move, you’ll find them — carrying water, carrying memory, carrying fire — ready to walk with you.
Part Three turns to the question of practice: How do we practice shared freedom—together—when authenticity demands action, and action reshapes the world? What happens when my freedom collides with another’s? How do we choose with integrity, knowing we are bound to one another?
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Lovely commentary, so timely...a necessary conversation.