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."
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