Escape From Freedom

 

“Freedom is never given; it is won.” – A. Philip Randolph

In an episode of The Survival Podcast this past week, Jack Spirko asked if his listeners made their own decisions or depended on others to make important decisions for them. I instantly sat up because a few hours before, I’d just read a chapter of The Road Less Travelled where M. Scott Peck, M.D. challenged his readers about making decisions and taking responsibility.

‘Almost all of us from time to time seek to avoid – in ways that can be quite subtle – the pain of avoiding responsibility for our own problems’. Hmmmm. . .do I fit into that demographic? I am not brave enough to list the number of examples I came up with from just that morning! But then, that word ‘pain’! Indeed if I don’t take responsibility for causing my pain, then I need to be pitied and helped because I am a victim, right?

‘The difficulty we have in accepting responsibility for our behaviour lies in our desire to avoid the pain of the consequences of that behaviour’. Well, I get to make my choices but not choose the consequences. But, if someone is causing me to behave in some way, isn’t it their fault that I get the results I get?

‘Whenever we seek to avoid the responsibility for our own behaviour, we do so by attempting to give that responsibility to some other individual or organization or entity’. Blame?

‘We have, however, the freedom to choose every step of the way the manner in which we are going to respond to and deal with these forces’. Ouch!

So Jack’s point is, if I have a problem I should take the time and give the effort to find out everything there is to know about it and all the options I have as a solution to it. The good and the bad; the positive and the negative; the risks and rewards. Then make the decision and live it. The common position people take is a sense of helplessness, the fear and inner conviction of being unable to ‘cope’ and to change things. But, the entirety of one’s adult life is a series of personal choices, decisions.

So, you can put off making decisions or give up your freedom and allow someone else to make them for you – be they your friends, parents, boss, pastor, doctor, politician, the media, etc. How much do you value your freedom? Do you have the courage to take the road less travelled and make your own choices and decisions for yourself? Can you put in the time and effort or is mental laziness more attractive to you? Weigh your options, pick your options.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” – Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search For Meaning

“I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.” – Robert A. Heinlein

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