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Chapter 14 - Freedom |
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an orator said, "Speak to us of Freedom." |
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| And he answered: At the city gate and by your
fireside I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship
your own freedom, Even as slaves humble themselves
before a tyrant and praise him though he slays them.
Aye, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow
of the citadel I have seen the freest among you wear
their freedom as a yoke and a handcuff. And my heart
bled within me; for you can only be free when even
the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to
you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a
goal and a fulfillment. You shall be free indeed
when your days are not without a care nor your nights
without a want and a grief, But rather when these
things girdle your life and yet you rise above them
naked and unbound. |
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| And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights
unless you break the chains which you at the dawn
of your understanding have fastened around your noon
hour? In truth that which you call freedom is the
strongest of these chains, though its links glitter
in the sun and dazzle your eyes. |
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| And what is it but fragments of your own self
you would discard that you may become free? If it
is an unjust law you would abolish, that law was
written with your own hand upon your own forehead.
You cannot erase it by burning your law books nor
by washing the foreheads of your judges, though you
pour the sea upon them. And if it is a despot you
would dethrone, see first that his throne erected
within you is destroyed. For how can a tyrant rule
the free and the proud, but for a tyranny in their
own freedom and a shame in their own pride? And if
it is a care you would cast off, that care has been
chosen by you rather than imposed upon you. |
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| And if it is a fear you would dispel, the seat
of that fear is in your heart and not in the hand
of the feared. Verily all things move within your
being in constant half embrace, the desired and the
dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued
and that which you would escape. These things move
within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling.
And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light
that lingers becomes a shadow to another light. And
thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes
itself the fetter of a greater freedom. |
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