What Are You Going to Do Today?

“To consider freedom as directly dependent on the number of man's requirements and the extent of their immediate satisfaction shows a twisted understanding of human nature, for such an interpretation only breeds in men a multitude of senseless, stupid desires and habits and endless preposterous inventions...so it is not surprising that, instead of freedom, they lapse into slavery, that, instead of promoting unity and brotherhood, they encourage division and isolation...” 

 ― Fyodor Dostoevsky

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Dear Kate,

You are free to do anything today.  Your freedom might not be perfect, but you are liberated enough to act in your own way, any constraint you feel also that on any infringement against your freedom, so by and (very) large you come out winning.

So what are you going to do today?  Your situation is more than good enough for you to be merely good enough.

You hear the quote above?  Most people I know, people with university degree, in best-paid profession, people with big ideas in their head and God thoughts in their heart, are not free enough to begin to consider what Dostoevsky meant.  Or should I say they would never use their freedom that way, to ponder on the phantom of their liberty?

You are in health care, the drug business, shall I say?  When you see one of those drug commercials on TV, with happily liberated people running around with their once-lost, new-found freedom (thanks to the drug) only to end with an auctioneer voice blabbering out a list of possible side-effects and warnings, how do you feel?  As well learned a drug-dealer as you are, if you are in the sick business of being dealt the necessity to take this particular drug, you will probably let your mind, your heart operate on the level of anyone else, swim in the wavelength of the marketer: the phantom of liberated people happily running around, spring breeze on their face, evening glow haloing their silhouette, flourishing.

As if.

As if we would have flourished if not for this medical condition or that.  As if if not for Covid our Christmas hope would have stayed, light would have shined always and forever in our tunnel.  As if the freedom we fight for to not take the vaccine is freedom meant for better use, to open up new human possibilities, to have its energy released into the cosmos to create and regenerate, coming back doubled, tripled, hope springs eternal.

"Anyone who can appease a man's conscience can take his freedom away from him."

We think we are talking about freedom when we talk about vaccine and such, we really think we do.  "That day must come when men will understand that freedom and daily bread enough to satisfy all are unthinkable and can never be had together, as men will never be able to fairly divide the two among themselves. And they will also learn that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, miserable nonentities born wicked and rebellious."

The day might come and go without us knowing.  Our heart, our mind, are operating on a different level, most engaged when being told and sold what we wish to be true, would rather be true, and, as such, must necessarily be true.  "Money is a kind of freedom that can be felt and heard; it is an inestimable treasure for a man entirely deprived of true liberty," Dostoevsky again has the final word, then and now.

So what are you going to do today?

Yours, Alex