The Road to Freedom (Part 3)

Thus began my journey with my good friend. I could not believe that I had lived my whole life just on the other side of freedom. I felt some sense of loss at this, but that was entirely clouded over by my excitement. There had existed all my life a place for which I should have longed, and I was finally on my way there!

In the beginning it was easy. The slope was gentle, and the grass was soft, and I was being driven by the excitement of what I thought would be a brief journey. Everything I saw looked beautiful and wonderful to me. 

At first I said, "I have never seen grass so green and so soft. I think that , if I were not on my way to freedom, I should like to spend some time sitting in it, and admiring the way that it blows in the wind."

"Yes," replied my friend, "the base of the hill is fair, and easy for the eyes and feet, but no beauty is as compelling as the beauty of Freedom!"

After some time had passed, the scenery began to change. The grass became more sparse, and rocks and boulders began to sit along the ground in its place. This I also marveled at.

"What a world this is! There is so much that I have missed by sitting in my valley. I have never seen any rocks that sparkle as these do, and I think I love the grass all the more here for its rarity."

The hill had also begun to grow steeper, and this I marveled at too.

"It is such a joy to walk uphill. I never realized how dull and flat my valley was."

"Your sense of wonder makes my glad," said my friend, "but do not love it here too much. We are journeying to a far greater place."

After this , huge crags loomed up before us, which would have made me weary had it not been for my amazement, and my eagerness to make it past them to our final destination. To make it past this we had to use all of our strength. We had to jump to reach the next ledge, and then pull ourselves up with our arms, using our feet to push once they could find a place. Though my eagerness did not depart, it was challenged. Every time I made it onto a new ledge I would lay facedown on it, sapped of all my energy. Once i had rested a while, I would look up, hoping to see nothing in front of me but a descending hillside. This, however, was some ways away.

Finally, my friend and I climbed one ledge that seemed to push us especially hard, and beyond our limits. After this, we lay for a considerable amount of time. Exhausted, but still not discouraged, I finally began to rouse myself.

"Shall we go now, then?" said my good friend.

"Yes," I managed. "Let's go." Reminding myself that I had no need for extra energy, since Freedom was waiting for us on the other side of this hill. I mustered up the extra bit of reserve that every body keeps for itself in case of an emergency, and rose to my feet, prepared to climb another crag.

At this point my eyes had become so accustomed to the sight of another ledge that I had almost forgotten about the possibility of anything else. This made things all the more shocking when, once I found my bearings on my feet, I looked straight ahead and saw a blue sky.

To try to explain the joy that this view brought to my heart with words would be like trying to explain love using math. It will suffice to say that the joy was very great.

This joy, though, was very short lived. As I stood at the top of that fateful hill, heart pounding with adrenaline, and began to lower my eyes ever so slightly to behold Freedom for the very first time, I saw something exceedingly unexpected…the peak of another hill.

Perplexed, I sought to question my friend and traveling companion to solve this riddle, "Are there more mountains in the land of Freedom?" I looked to him to receive his answer, but his eyes remained fixed on the horizon. 

"Freedom, my friend, is just beyond this hill." 

The Road To Freedom Part 2

I wasn't always on this journey. I wasn't always on any journey. There was a time when I was content to sit. When my good friend first found me, I was in the valley that I called my home. I don't remember anything before being in this place, I simply remember being there. I would drink the water from the stream that flowed through my valley, and I would eat the fruit from the trees. There wasn't much, but at the time I didn't want much. 

The water was not great, but it quenched my thirst. The fruit had no flavor worth loving, hating, or remembering, but it did satisfy my hunger. I thought of neither life nor death. Nor did I wonder what lay beyond the hills. In this place I had no trouble, and felt no loss--sitting, eating, and drinking.

One day, as I was sitting in my valley, I heard a loud, laughing, bellowing voice, "Ha! Just one more peak lies between me and freedom!" He sang, almost, as he walked and spoke to himself.

Startled, I turned and looked, amazed that another person had made his way into my home. Up until now, I had never been anything but alone. I did not know whether this man was a guest or an intruder, since I had never known either. Feeling dumbfounded in this novel situation, I said the only thing I could think of,

"Excuse me, sir, what are you doing here?"

At this the man laughed all the harder, and seemed all the merrier. I think it was the first he had seen of me. 

"Ah, my friend," he replied," what are you doing here? Why are you sitting? Why are you content when freedom is just beyond this hill?"

Just beyond this hill? I thought. I had never thought of anything but my valley, and I had certainly never thought that freedom, of all things, was just on the other side of my home. Had I really lived my whole life just sitting in my valley while freedom was waiting within a stone's throw of me? But wait, I reminded myself, what is freedom?

"Freedom?" I asked, "I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean. This is my home."

"Home? No, my friend, this is no man's home. Though you may live here, you belong with freedom. You can see that this water is flowing in the same direction that I am traveling, and I can tell you that it is a mere trickling compared to the body that it fills, and these trees are mere saplings of the great orchards in the land where I am headed, and where you belong. Have you never dreamed or desired that there could be more than this?"

Truthfully, I had not. I had neither joy nor want in my valley, and, until now, I certainly had made no use of imagination. But at his voice, and by the spirit of his words, I found all three being awoken within me: joy, want, and imagination. My trees seemed puny, because I could not feast, and my stream seemed meager, because I could not swim in its water. 

I didn't realize it at first, but during our conversation I had begun to follow him, and I found myself starting up the hill at his side. After a few moments, I was startled by a sound, which I realized was my own voice muttering a new refrain:

"Freedom, freedom, freedom."

"The Road To Freedom" Part 1

"Just over this next hill," said by good friend. "We are on the road to freedom! We've only a bit farther to go."

The road to freedom! I could not think of anything so invigorating as the idea of arriving at freedom. I also couldn't think of anything that sounded more impossible. But this is the way of ideals, and ideals are what really matter.

We had reached the peaks of countless hills until now, each of them promising to be the end of our struggle on the road to freedom, but I was slowly beginning to learn that it wasn't about obtaining freedom, it was really about pursuing the promise. At the base of every hill a man must believe that there is freedom on the other side, and at its peak he must know in his heart that freedom truly does lie just beyond the next peak. I learned that I must believe things that I know to be false in order to steadily continue down the road before me. I called this hope: to believe in my heart that reality is in unity with my deepest desires, and to continue pressing on--even when I know that that is impossible. 

And so, my friend would always say, "Just over this next hill, then we will see freedom with our own eyes." At which point my heart would swell, and we would both believe that what he said was true, and with the glowing smile of what I now called hope I would say, "Yes, friend. Just beyond this hill."