Let Freedom Sting
I’ve been kinda tied up for awhile with some stuff. So, this is what’s been on my mind as of late.
One of the many things I mull over endlessly is the concept of Freedom. All the way from, “does it even exist?” to “don’t tread on me, beeyotch!”, or something along those lines.
The following argument won’t necessarily hold up in logic court, so let’s just say its something I’m mulling over, and proving/disproving in my head:
God = Love
Love = Freedom
Freedom = Responsibility
Whether God is an old dude with a beard sitting in the clouds, an eternal ‘Mind’ that created everything but not necessarily Jehovah, or the effects of electromagnetism on your brain (anyone watching Lost?), let’s just call this concept of ultra-consciousness God. Someone/thing else exists outside of us, and either brought us into existence, or at least is there as some sort of moral compass. Biblically, God is Love; simple as that. But if the whole God/church thing bugs you, then most likely you at least subscribe to some sort of Golden Rule of living which I like to refer to as the “everybody should just be cool to each other, dude” sense of morality. Don’t wanna get into all that here, but, this concept of goodness to each other isn’t too difficult: peace and love, baby. Why are peace and love cool? Well, see above (no pun intended). It comes to us from our higher consciousness, the ‘gift’ that makes us….us.
Ok, that part sucked. Tough stuff to tackle there, and I still tweak on it all the time. Let’s move on. Love = Freedom. “If you love someone, set them free.” If that sounds like the opposite of Love to you, then you need to figure some stuff out. I like to tell the young and hooked up that a good sign that you actually love someone is at the moment you realize that if they genuinely decided they were better off without you, you would be genuinely happy for them. You truly just want what’s best for them, even if that means they choose not to love you back. Love can’t be a prison in any way, it has to be a choice for both people. Hence, the whole Freedom thing. True Love is choosing to love someone, and allowing them the Freedom to choose whether or not to love you.
So what do we do with all that Freedom? I’m sure we’ve all heard some punk kid say, “Its a free country!” right about the time when they were hoping to get away with breaking some sort of rule or doing something lame to someone. This is where we start to see a circle that takes the concept back to the top. If I’ve got Freedom, and I believe that we all deserve the same Freedom, then I have the Responsibilty to not infringe on other people’s Freedom. Not everyone is real keen on this, so, we gotta set up rules and laws to help keep people from screwing with other people’s Freedom. As a friend once put it, “Hell is everyone getting everything they want, all the time.” Try to picture everyone going around taking whatever they want from each other, and killing each other over it, etc. etc. We have the Freedom to make those choices, but, because of their infringement upon the Freedom of others, we have the Responsibility to choose wisely, or our own Freedom may be infringed.
On a political sidenote, this whole issue of Freedom and Responsibility is the real issue in ‘08.
So, where am I? Oh yeah, Free! And the choice is mine what to do with that. And for me, the big challenge is to not be afraid of that Responsibility.