Other people’s standards and hopes for our lives hang on us, chains breaking our collar bones and bruising our skins.
Large patches of black and purple, spreading on skin like the oil staining the Gulf after the Deepwater Horizon.
We must unchain ourselves. We ought to turn our hearts inward first, then upward. Diligently work to not care about and forget what others think of us, our goals, our desires, our past, our thoughts, our ambitions, our future.
Work a nine-to-five; work week in, week out; work that job on the streets; work that pay number on a prison yard; work a schoolroom; work an outdate; work a retirement date; work an office tower; work a guard tower; work a marriage.
Stop.
Let us answer two questions: what do we want from life for ourselves? What gifts do we want to give to others while we are here? Without answering these, the days seem futile and each drama that appears feels like Armageddon. And nothing will matter. We will simply remain recyclable, copper-tops. Let us together pull up the deeply rooted anchor of unpurposeful living.
We will stop telling people what we do for a living. Instead, we will tell them what we live for.
We will see reality as it truly exists. We won’t buy what they are selling. The cash and popularity and the image and fakedom. We won’t follow their lead; won’t drink their bad brew; won’t follow the herd. What we will do is cut our own path with boldness blended with humility, strength tempered with discernment, the audacity to act paused for analytical caution. Accept our world as paradoxical and irrational.
Reconsider, reconsider, reconsider everything.
We know what to do. We can see the leeches as they lurk under the surface, looking to live off our blood, our life, our spirit. We must liberate our soul from the things they told us to carry – even though we never remember agreeing to carry these chains, weights, leashes. Free our spirits to engage with a God they tell us doesn’t exist.
Are we Mr. Andersons, clones, cogs in the system? A robot, a battery? Do we prefer a comfortable illusion or an uncomfortable truth?
No, we will follow the white rabbit and take the red pill. The real us, the Neo, is inside of us dormant, waiting for us to engage in the fight. To rip free. To vanquish the monotony-born death and complacency that their comfort comes with.
We know why the caged lion dreams; because we have finally seen the cage.
Now we will rip the bars from the hinges and live, live, live victoriously free.
Smell of Freedom | Christopher Warren
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