I am free…is *that* true?
On this fine day I always think of freedom and what it means to me. This year I asked some neighbors I don’t normally find at home during the day. "Freedom," said my neighbor Leonard, a proud Texan, "is being able to sit in my back yard and eat hotdogs and stay drunk all damned day and no one can say a thing about it." Mrs. Leonard hands him another cold one. His fourth, if we count the crushed empties scattered around him.
Leonard has a further epiphany: "Naw, seriously, being free is all about the gub’mint can’t tell you how to worship and the church isn’t supposed to get any gub’mint support….aw hell…I mean dangit! Freedom don’t mean what it did once."
Leonard, you said a mouthful. Thanks for sharing your fine hickory smoked brisket, and a Happy 4th to you and the missus.
"I think independance for people of color should have been left in the constitution." said elderly Annalee through a mouthful of her daughter’s strawberry-rhubard pie. "They took it out you know. Jefferson was for leaving it in but of course now we know he was seeing his maid on the side. Poor Mrs. Jefferson. Bless her heart." Annalee and her daughter Ruth live together in a tiny Craftsman with eight cats. She has me thinking about all those not free today because of the color of their skin.
God bless, Annalee, enjoy that pie.
"Freedom is in the mind." said neighbor Akane, a Japanese decorator "it is personally created. Either you have it or you don’t, what the government does or does not do is immaterial." Well said, Akane. Very Buddhist and very true.
I was thinking about this question myself. Are people free? And whatever the answer is, is that true?
Appropos to the last post being partially about Byron Katie, I dialogued with myself: "People are not free, that is why we place so much emphasis on freedom." and then: "Is that true? How can I know that’s true?" And turning this around on its ear I thought: "Freedom is an illusion…lack of freedom is an illusion".
Agree with this? Disagree? Feel free to leave a comment.
Or simply think within yourself…what is the one thing that I am saying NO to, that I really want to say YES to? And what is the one thing I am embracing that I need to let go of?
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