A young boy spied a small bird sitting aloft on a telephone wire.
"Poor bird! Look Daddy, look at the poor bird!"
"What's wrong? Why is that a 'poor bird', son?"
"The poor bird doesn't have a cage to live in!"
Today, as you think about your circumstances, are you the boy or the bird? Perhaps both? I feel like the boy when I see sleep-deprived new moms or roving missionaries or People Without Plans. Then sometimes I feel like the perched bird when people react to my spiritual convictions, career nonprofit work, and even decision to consume only "ethical" chocolate. Freedom, it turns out, is subjective.
As an abolitionist, sometimes it is easy to forget that freedom can be scary. It's big and uncharted--unconstrained and unconfined by definition. You don't know what you might run into or what might come to get you. You don't know your personal limits or the limits of your circumstances until you explore them. Freedom requires initiative. It requires courage. It requires tenacity. All of us claim to want freedom, but I am concerned that we primarily want the diluted freedom to choose comfort over all else--even if that comfort looks like confinement.
Which are you today?
"Poor bird! Look Daddy, look at the poor bird!"
"What's wrong? Why is that a 'poor bird', son?"
"The poor bird doesn't have a cage to live in!"
Today, as you think about your circumstances, are you the boy or the bird? Perhaps both? I feel like the boy when I see sleep-deprived new moms or roving missionaries or People Without Plans. Then sometimes I feel like the perched bird when people react to my spiritual convictions, career nonprofit work, and even decision to consume only "ethical" chocolate. Freedom, it turns out, is subjective.
As an abolitionist, sometimes it is easy to forget that freedom can be scary. It's big and uncharted--unconstrained and unconfined by definition. You don't know what you might run into or what might come to get you. You don't know your personal limits or the limits of your circumstances until you explore them. Freedom requires initiative. It requires courage. It requires tenacity. All of us claim to want freedom, but I am concerned that we primarily want the diluted freedom to choose comfort over all else--even if that comfort looks like confinement.
Which are you today?
1 comment:
Oh no... I fear I am both a sleep deprived new mom and a member of the People Without Plans Club. :)
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” -Ben Franklin
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