Rare are those who understand the limits of freedom.
Even rarer are those who understand the freedom of the limits.
Eskimos say: "Do not build a door that is bigger than the house".
It means the same as to build the windows smaller than the eyes.
-- excerpt from the poem “Eyes” *1
It is interesting how most of us take freedom for granted. And, we behave as same for many other things that do not have a price tag. We think about them only when we lose them; family, love, health, freedom ... we start thinking about them only when they are not in our presence anymore.
To be free is a great gift, but with great gifts always comes a great responsibility. You have to be always vigilant, you have to protect them, you have to keep them in your sight, and you have to fight for them — with all your will and all your heart.
Past generations fought wars, they rallied against oppression and discrimination, and they spoke for those who did not have a voice or for those whose voices were suppressed.
And what is it exactly that we do?
Nowadays, it seems we do not care about our freedom at all. We are willing to accept everything under the pretext of consumeristic need/desire or false patriotism; we will accept anyone’s intrusion on our privacy and our life. How quickly we forget that the very thing we are giving up so easily was, in the not so distant past, paid with blood.
During Nixon’s era, the Watergate scandal *2 *3 was a huge issue and it caused a great disturbance. Today, we are experiencing an unprecedented level of spying. It is hundreds of times larger than Watergate, and it is not just NSA that I am talking about; small or big tech companies, governments, individuals ... it seems everyone is spying on everyone, and everyone is collecting data about everyone. It is so huge that it is almost unimaginable, but yet again, it seems that just a few people care about it. It seems that spying has become a new normal.
This very much resembles the experiment with the frog that gets boiled alive without noticing the slowly rising water temperature, and once the water starts boiling, it is way too late for the poor creature.
Unlike frogs, you have a bigger brain, so ask yourself, “What is it that they trying to heat today without me noticing? And who is trying to boil the water in which I stand?” and ask those frequently.
The novelist George Santayana once famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” And, no one said it as good as Ronald Reagan "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, OR one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the world* where men were free."
Heart attacks rarely manifest as sudden and unexpected blows, instead they are usually preceded by many warnings; however, many completely ignore those warnings. Evil never sleeps. When we forget to be wary and forget that it exists, as it goes, it is very likely that we are at the verge of the same evil we have experienced many times before in our history.
He spoke of very simple things — that it is right for a gull to fly,
that freedom is the very nature of his being, that whatever stands against
that freedom must be set aside, be it ritual or superstition or limitation in any form.
“Set aside,” came a voice from the multitude, “even if it be the Law of the Flock?”
“The only true law is that which leads to freedom,” Jonathan said.
“There is no other.”
-- excerpt from the book "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" *4
Comments