Light on the Page

The concept of freedom is very largely misunderstood. All too often it’s forced into its opposite, which is a form of imprisonment. We understand freedom to be the absence of constraint, the lack of an external will imposing itself on you. Hence national freedom, hence the freedom of expression. Why is it these things tend to erupt into their opposite – the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, even the so-called freedom of the press, which degenerates into falsehoods so easily? The answer is that freedom is not the absence or the lack of anything at all. Rather it’s the prize gained by the self when it rises through its past, its history, its successes and failures, and gradually transforms itself to act independently of these things. A prize in this sense is a very different thing from a concept existing in a void.

Sleep is the condition which dissolves, which ‘forgives’ your actions of the day. But it does not set you free. Day itself demands that you make adjustment for your deeds. In a larger sense we might say that death dissolves your deeds but does not make recompense for them. Can I, then, completely out of myself, as the master of my own resolve, create an hour of freedom in the day, where my past defeats and failures won’t condition what I do?

Exactly what it is I have to make recompense for might elude me. Night holds that secret. But day remembers with its open arms, in the sense that it leads and guides me to what I have to do. My old mistakes may lay down their burden if I can choose to be what I can be – an evolving being awakening to independent action. Then all that remains is to glance at them with a backwards frown and set the power of nature in me free.

 

Revolve

And sleep forgives but will not set you free,

for that the day demands its recompense.

The night dissolves your every history,

but waking urges you to sight and sense.

Can I be master of my own resolve,

to make an hour of freedom in the day,

where past defeats and failures can’t revolve

or darken what I choose to think or say?

 

Power of Nature

Where I have come from only night can say,

but day remembers with its open arms.

And though I ponder deeply on the way,

the road will not reveal its hidden charms.

My old mistakes may lay their burden down

if I can choose to be what I can be

and glancing at them with a backwards frown

I’ll set the power of nature in me free.

 

Best wishes, today,

Landar

 

© landar 2010. All rights reserved