ARE YOU DEPRIVED OF YOUR RIGHT TO BE HEARD? How far are you willing to go to express your opinion, thoughts and ideas? Will you settle for the local arena or push your limits? Do you want to address your message to the majority or a select few? These are challenging questions that each of us should consider when he wants to exercise his freedom of expression.

Expressing our freedom of expression knows no limits. We can go as far as we can imagine, not literally but technically. We can use various forms of media to deliver our message. In return, we may receive feedback on the message we send. That’s how communication goes. It is a two-way process. In the communication process, we can be the sender or the receiver. If the recipient responds, it could only mean that the message was interesting enough. Otherwise, we must reconsider the meaning of our concerns before submitting it.

We may have that freedom of expression, but with that freedom we must have that sense of responsibility. We are responsible for everything we said, for every message or opinion we express. We must uphold honesty and integrity in every word we speak. That’s real freedom. It is exactly contradictory to what most people believed. Freedom can mean doing things according to our will, but its consequences are beyond our control. Of course, no one would want to spend the rest of their life behind bars, right? ETHICS is the key word for that freedom to be fully exercised.

All of these ideas I learned not just sitting in the corner and doing nothing, I learned them at the two-day seminar on basic journalism that I attended at the university where I currently worked. The activity was initiated to equip the university with a group of writers from various departments who will bring the latest updates from the university to the global community.

We have to write EXPRESS, not to impress. Otherwise, we might end up so depressed.