Monday, July 23, 2007

Fear, Love and Freedom


I apologize for not keeping up with this blog so well in the past couple of weeks. But I have some new observations to make that have been on my mind for a while.


One is the dichotomy between fear and love. About a week ago Elizabeth and I were riding our bikes down by the Lake. It was a beautifully poetic thing, what is great about when I go riding with people now its not about the ride and the training advantage that will be received by pedaling for the suggested time period, but instead its about discovery. Anyway, so in this spirit of discovery, we rode down to the lake, it was pristine day, easily distracted by the sights of people/places and things we were happy. We danced on the public art, threw our bikes down and threw ourselves into creativity. As we rode, we found a lighthouse down by the Summerfest Fairgrounds and got the great idea to see if we could climb up inside of it. However, we found it to be locked up and inaccessible. So we sat enjoying the water and watching the boats come into the harbor. Elizabeth thought it well to wave and smile at all the boats as they came in, after all, she had been doing this the whole ride, waving and smiling at all the people we passed along the trail, breaking the isolation that we each feel from each other like a hammer on ice. This friendly endeavor of waving and smiling lead to an amazing adventure. As she leaned over the dock, red hair blowing in the wind; free. A boater yelled out "hey, would you like a ride?" Elizabeth stood there apprehensive. But I had learned a few things since the tour, with respect to opening yourself up to strangers to let them be a part of your life. I urged Elizabeth to partake what some might call risky behaviour with a lone man on a boat. We climbed down from the dock loading our bikes into the sailboat for a ride. Wearing nothing but Lycra and bicycle jerseys we sat, meeting and greeting a stranger on a sailboat. Oh boy, what a glorious endeavor!


Peter was his name, a middle aged tanned scruffy sailor who was living the life that the suits downtown only wished they could attain through their corporate salaries. Peter was free, Peter was happy! Once a salesman who worked the white collar job soon found that the life he was living was not satisfying, after being broken up and shredded by the seemingly meaninglessness of the rat race, he left it all and found his way onto a sailboat, traveling around bodies of water in the way that every Jimmy Buffet fan wishes they could. Peter was free, he had been face to face with the life that we all get sucked into. First, you go to college, get into a lot of debt, get a car, get into more debt, get a good job, to pay that debt back, decide that you need a house, take out a mortgage and before you realized the iron chain that solidified you to modern society is sealed, your freedom is exchanged for the very things that you believe will make you free. Crazy how that happens eh? The way we are constructed into this mental and physical slavery.

Peter has a lot going for him; so many people when asked what they believe to be the meaning of life respond by saying that they want to be happy, and although to some extent, this may be a selfish pursuit, like Rousseau would say, you have to foster your garden and be happy before you can help others be happy.


So how do you find happiness? I don't think that it can be found through the traditional modes of everyday life that the "American Dream" suggests in fact just the opposite, through rejection of the very thing that we think will make us free is the path toward it.


Anyway, it was a great experience and I enjoyed every minute of it. As Elizabeth sat on the front of the boat letting the breeze flow through her hair like the fingers of God, Peter and I sat there, understanding each other. We sat sailing into the sunset with a shared mutual understanding about how this world works. One so simplistically revolutionary, that modernity must overcome great leaps and bounds to comprehend.


Freedom comes through breaking down the walls of fear that only work to serve the bourgeoisie. Fear divides us from ever trusting other people, they say that crime has risen, that we must lock our doors, carry a gun, not hitchhike, be scared of terrorists, planes, bombs and people. At each level, it isolates us further and further from making community and realizing collectively that were all stuck in this stupid rat race. Only when we break down these walls of fear that separate us from each other can we truly be happy. These walls only exist to isolate us from others so we don't realize that in the end, we are truly all one big human family, all individuals looking for effectively the same thing. We all want love, truth, happiness and community with others. But this cannot happen in a society so filled with fear.


As Elizabeth and I jumped onto a boat with a complete stranger, we took that first step at breaking down that fear complex that we have all been so craftily duped into following, and as we bid farewell to our new friend Peter, we realized how full life could be when we rejected fear and loved for once, embraced each other with open arms and yes, maybe even left ourselves vulnerable to being hurt.


"Your heart is a muscle the size of your fist, keep LOVING, keep fighting!"

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