Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Freedom and Its Price



“All we have of freedom - all we see or know – this our fathers bought for us, long and long ago.”

Rudyard Kipling (1899)

Commenting on this quote could take us in many different directions. The one I’ll choose is to ask a simple and yet very challenging question:

What are you doing with the freedom purchased for you?

Answers welcome!

With love and respect,

Robert

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Freedom has its price...and I have just bought myself more freedom. The other night I realized that I have been in chains for years- chains of compulsive behaviors I didn't even realized I engaged in. Here I am in a free society exercising my rights...to be jailed by my own compulsive behaviors. The realization was so big it's taking me several days to get my arms around its profundity and the far reaching effects of where it will take me if I choose to change the behaviors- how much time I will suddenly have to be creative if I stop doing what I've been doing for nearly half my life. Freedom to do this behavior in the first place is one right. The responsibility to change an irresponsible and wasteful behavior is another way to respond to that freedom- and a way to use it- and another right. I am deeply humbled to have been given so much time to stumble onto my own mistakes, and have half my life to make up for them in service.