What Does Freedom Mean?

God said:

Beloved, the way you perceive is modeled from where you sit or from where you stand. You have your own seeing range. You see from your point of view. You may adore something the way it is, or you may have no tolerance for something the way it is depending upon from where you take a look. Cannot life be fair game, or must life be proscribed?

You may see your view solid and down to earth, yet someone else who sees differently from you is equally convinced as you are of his rightness. The same book read is seen as marvelous or as not worth reading. The same color, perhaps chartreuse, can be your favorite color and to someone else, his least favorite. It has been said that there is no accounting for tastes.

Everyone on Earth observes what he observes. Does anyone truly make a decision, or is everyone encamped where he happens to be? The view from under the bridge isn’t identical to the view from the top of the bridge. Everyone may gauge everything differently from you.

For one son, mathematics may be joy. For another, grammar or fixing cars may be, and so on. Must there be only one correct temperature? Must all people scale the same heights? Must all digging be only yay deep?

What is to get in the way of anything and by whose say-so?

Is anything what it seems? Is this tree you touch the same tree your friend leans on?

Oh, yes, life itself seems to be a mixed bag, or is everyone simply mixed up, or can everyone be correct in his own way then?

Do any two people actually see the same or grasp the same at all? Is there any reason why any two must or must not? And how do you know this?

Is the world topsy-turvy, or is it each individual who is, and what does it matter anyway?

Must anyone’s take on life be the same? Why must everyone see the same or tell the same story and what for? Upon what thread therein hangs the tale hang?

Is there any reason why what means the most to your brother has to mean the most to you as well? If you say yes, by why divine right would that be? Just because? Because you want it to be, and that’s that? Can it also be that no two people need to see alike? Cannot it also be acceptable that everyone sees as he sees? Can this also be what is meant when it is said that there is room for all at the Inn?

Who is it that says that all must agree? Tyrants perhaps? Dignitaries or the indignant? Who would put the same glasses on properly or take them off at the same stroke of noon?

Exactness does not have to be extracted in the same dose, does it? What does freedom mean, after all? Freedom must indeed allow variation. Freedom cannot include some and exclude others. By whose say so?

Nor must everything be en masse, nor must anything be appropriated and something else not, and, upon whose say-so or not?

I say live and let live, and let the bells ring. I do not say to dictate nor to be dictated to. Is not freedom more desirable than imprisonment? Who is free to disallow another’s freedom? Upon whose say-so then?


I like bananas and you like banahnahs
I say Havana and I get Havahnah
Bananas, banahnahs, Havana, Havahnah
Go your way, I'll go mine
Ella Fitzgerald