"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."