Freedom for Excellence

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Freedom for Excellence.

This is a phrase I like best among everything I have learned from World Youth Alliance Asia Pacific (WYA AP) as an intern. Right now, there are seven of us: three international interns, including myself, from Indonesia, Vietnam and Japan, and four Filipino interns.

As interns, aside from our daily tasks and event preparations, we also undergo Track A training, where we learn about essential aspects of human dignity.

One of the chapters tackled freedom. From this session I learned that “freedom for excellence” is the capacity to choose wisely and to act well as a matter of habit and the means by which, exercising both our reason and our will, we act on the natural longing for truth, for goodness, and for happiness that is built into us as human beings. To put it simply, doing whatever we want is not truly freedom. Rather, true human freedom is choosing and doing things to improve ourselves even if they are challenging to us.

The reason why I like this term is that I love challenges. Challenges give me ordeals and I often make mistakes. However, after the trials, I feel that in every aspect I have become better than before. Some people are afraid of making mistakes; But I believe that it is the experience of failure that makes us better and teaches us how to improve ourselves and succeed. We can learn more things from failure than success.

Of course, no one really asks for pain and challenges. But we will not grow if we stay satisfied where we are right now. We also have to remember that living as a true human being means using our reason and will in making decisions. Putting our will and reason to good use is the first step in improving ourselves and enhancing our human dignity.

Takuma (1)

Written by Takuma Masamune, a Japanese regional intern at WYA Asia Pacific. If you’re interested to apply to the Regional Internship Program of WYA Asia Pacific in Manila, Philippines, please click here.

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