Freedom and Slavery, 8-4-2010

I have no freedom in my future. First, the federal government shall place me in prison. The federal government follows prison with what they call supervised release. But when was I ever truly free?

I had work and a profession hemming in when the conventions of society did not. I would even say my vices did not liberate me. In the end, I saw suicide as my liberation. My mind battered with depression and disillusionment and self-loathing had no more energy, or belief, in rebellion or redemption.

Consider these words I found in Camus' The Fall:

Without slavery, as a matter of fact, there is no definitive solution. I very soon realized that. Once upon a time, I was always talking of freedom... I didn't know freedom is not a reqward or a decoration that is celebrated with champagne... It's a chore, on the contrary, and along-distance race, quite solitary and very exhausting... At the end of all freedom is a court sentence; that's whey freedom is too heavy to bear, especially when you're down with a fever, or are distressed, or love nobody.

 And when I was not incarcerated, what good did I do with my “freedom”? I like to think I never fit into this description from The Fall:

Ah, the little sneaks, play actors, hypocrites - and yet so touching! Beleive me, they all are, even when they set fire to heaven. Whether they are atheists or churchgoers, Muscovites or Bostonians, all Christians from father to son. But it so happens that ther eis no more father, no more rule! They are free and hence have to shift for themselves; and since they don't want freedom or its judgments, they asked to be rapped on the knuckles, they invent dreadful rules, they rush out to build piles of faggots to replace churches. Savonarolas, I tell. But they believe solely in sin, never in grace. They think og it to be sure. Grace is what they want - acceptance, surrender, happiness, and maybe, for they are sentimental too, betrohal, the virginal bride, the upright man, the organ music....

I hedged my bets too much to qualify for a Savonarola – as a woman told me a bit under thirty years ago, I was a bullshitter. I tried to prove I could be bad when I thought good beyond my talents. I found myself a failure as a human being with no means of recovering myself. I would have become a suicide; instead, I became a felon. 

I can see no future where I need to worry about the competing demands of freedom. As a felon, I have been removed from the mainstream of life where choices made or not made have influence; herein after my choices are made to me.

sch

[This is one note I find myself opposed to my younger self. It is also one where I see why I joined the Orthodox Church. Although, that may be attributable to the run of pieces so far from August 2010. One thing I picked up from the Desert Fathers was that the world is not freedom. Yes, I may never have been free living as I was, but there can be a freedom. Nor is freedom a code word for license. No, I found freedom to do what needed to be done for a better life than I had been living. People think I must be unhappy with the life I am living. I would be unhappy if I were not writing, if I did not have the Orthodox Church in my life, if I went back to my old life. sch 8/5/23]