Oh where is my road, my precious road, where life is only what it is, and what it is, is freedom?
Today, I am trapped, held prisoner in a world of ignorant indulgence. Forced to live under a skin of lies, I conceal all that i am inside. My jailed soul screams out from my silent depths, starved of genuine human kindness in a world of ‘me first.’
Daily, I am blessed to live in the powerful love of my family, my friends and the pleasant stranger across the counter. And while my friendly smile is true, I am lost and alone in a world that is no longer mine. My own deep inner peace rests far from this world of tomorrow’s predictions and yesterday’s news. Canada, infatuated with its ever growing pile of possessions, is no longer my home.
There is such beauty all around us! Oh the precious beauty, shoved beyond the margins by the grammatical order of line after line after line of perfectly formed emptiness.
“I will be a good boy and do what I am told.”
“I will be a good boy and do what I am told.”
“I will be a good boy and do what I am told.”
What is a tree, planted in a sidewalk, surrounded by a perfect circle of decorative stones? What is treated water, flowing over the straight and even edges of the mall water fountain? Such perversion of nature’s infinitely flawed perfection! And us, animals, beautiful and unique as a bird in flight, chained and constrained by order and rules and the way things simply must be.
What of freedom?
What of life?
Oh, to just run away! Of course I can’t. After all, one must be reasonable right? I don’t have the slightest idea why one must be reasonable. Being sensible and realistic sounds truly like the least reasonable choice of all. To be reasonable is to buy our cages, and sacrifice the very meaning of freedom. To be reasonable is to surrender the priceless individuality that is the gift of life itself.
I close my eyes and I am on the Kenyan savannah, in depths of the Great Rift Valley, where our species first took shape. I am on foot and alone, sharing the silent serenity of sunrise with herd upon herd of gently grazing animals. At once, they sense danger and flee, flowing like a wave down one hillside and up the next. My breath catches in my throat, and I feel in my heart the wild beauty of life itself. Tears fill my eyes, as for the first time in my life, I am as one.
The orderly chaos of hundreds of animals in flight, and the exhilaration and awe give way to envy. Anatomically, my body and theirs are identical. Heads, limbs, organs and emotions; our differences are mere variations on the same blueprint. And yet, there is no reconciling our distinct animal experiences of life. They live as one with all that is alive around them. I live in a box made of concrete and steel, breathing re-circulated air and eating processed chemicals.
What is this uniquely human ‘gift of reason’ if not a wall that separates us from everything it means to be alive? There is no moment more human than the moment at which death becomes possible. In that moment, all that is empty and meaningless fades away, leaving only life’s love to fill the void. So what of our world, our lives, riddled with self-indulgent distraction? Where is the unique beauty of the urbanite, except in the colour of their tie or the make of their shoes? Where is passion’s wild expression in a school system designed to make everyone the same?
In our world, to stand out is to give a different answer to the same question asked of everyone else. To succeed is to get exactly what everyone else has, only bigger, better, newer and more expensive. I have seen nothing in my life so quintessentially ugly as the sub-urban subdivision. Home after home, identical except for the shoes and tie. They represent the realization of success for millions of people, and yet are the very epitome of conformity and thus the destruction of what it means to be unique. Our world is founded on the obscuring and obstruction of the individual. We are raised from birth to fit into the slots of our well oiled society.
Well fuck that! Fuck money, careers, homes, cars, iphones and rooms full of useless shit. To hell with passive entertainment, canned opinions, suits and ties, sidewalks, malls, Wal-Mart and ‘don’t walk.’ I do not choose 3 square meals a day, or going to bed at night and getting up in the morning so that I can afford to conform.
Give me family and friends. Give me lust and pain and hunger and fear. Give me mountains, forests, oceans and animals. Give me food that doesn’t need shit poured on it to do what it has been doing for the last 3 billion years. Give me freedom and fun and life and love. I have one life to live, and I don’t want to waste another moment purchasing chains for my soul or the cage in which I will die.
“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves”
–Henry David Thoreau
Peace and love.
