Real Freedom

I received a response to an email I'd sent to a friend. It prompted him to express how freedom was his number 1 priority. I thought I post my response.

Hi Kirk,

I too am obsessed with freedom. An interesting thing about freedom, however, is that freedom cannot be truly realized absent discipline. As example: Many years ago one of my daughters wanted to learn to play the piano. Great! I said. Piano lessons it is. We started the piano lessons and, to help here as best I could, I would be available at practice time.

One day at practice, after the 4th of 5th lesson, I was sitting on the bench with her attempting to talk her through a simple piece, which at that stage can be very frustrating, when I noticed big tears starting to roll down her cheeks. I asked, “Honey what’s wrong?” She said, in a weak tear filled voice, “I don’t want to do all this practicing. I just want to play the piano.

I thought for a moment and said “Ok. You don’t have to practice. Go ahead. You’re free to just play the piano." Crying a bit harder she said “But I can’t”. That’s when I “really got” the link between discipline and freedom. My daughter was free to play the piano, but to what purpose without first exercising her freedom by disciplining herself to practice.

Freedom without disciple is a fanciful illusion. The freedom of anarchy is freedom without discipline. You can raise a lot of hell. You can break up things. You can lay about all day and smoke pot, but without discipline, freedom creates nothing

Liberty / Freedom; the same thing only different?

For some time now, I've sensed that liberty and freedom have different meanings. Differences, that even after exploration, I could not truly grasp and could not, therefore, articulate. Today, I inadvertently came across an article published in the New York Times, 3/4/2003, written by Geoffrey Nunberg, that opened the door for me. The piece isn't necessarily an end in itself as regards the two concepts these words are intended to convey, but it broke the log jam in my thinking, allowing me to discern, and consider more clearly their differentiating qualities. Rather than hold forth on what the article said, I invite you to read it for yourself.

http://is.gd/1hbCY