We often think of freedom from a political perspective, in terms of activities in which we believe government should not interfere. Here are some thoughts about freedom from a different perspective.
he was kneeling in his room pondering the life he’d chosen and the many lives he’d given up when suddenly he realized how often he’d said no to wealth to fame to pleasure to the kind of joy that comes from feeling others care and somehow he got stuck on all the times and ways his life had flowed from no without that no how different he’d have been not sitting now a recluse in his room communing with his god but lost instead in matters of the world disciplined and humble still he couldn’t help but smile as he pondered his relentless no how much he’d chosen not to do or say or feel he’d framed a way of life built on a simple no and now for him the world around him in a sense existed only as what he had mastered with a no and yet since he’d not made it come to be it was a world that given its immenseness surely must have been created by his god a god who could have made it any way he pleased and then the monk reflected on the nature of his god on what his god must be to have created all the things that one can see to be so free the monk acknowledged that he didn’t know what god began with maybe remnants of a former world or maybe when he started there was nothing there at all and then there crossed the mind of this reclusive monk a thought he’d never wrestled with before what if the world had flowed from an idea in god’s mind if so what other thoughts what other worlds might there have been to which god had said no kneeling in his room before a cross and feeling closer now than ever to his god the monk felt heartened by this sudden revelation as he brought his meditation to a close he thanked his god for helping him to see a deeper manner in which he is free and how so very like his god is he
From Life’s Ballet © 2020 Charles Schlee
[1] This poem was inspired by “La liberté cartésienne.” In Jean-Paul Sartre, Situations philosophiques (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1990), pp. 61-79.