LIBERTY
Liberty is not an object or an ideology, and it’s not something we carry like a talisman. Instead, liberty is a road, and we travel that road to deliver something sacred to a rightful destination. This is what having a destiny means.
To transport life’s beautiful meaning, and to deliver it to our lineage's beloved youth, we must preserve the road-of-liberty. If we forget life’s beautiful meaning, then we forget why the road-of-liberty is necessary at all. And similarly, if the road has been blocked, then our destiny collapses, meaning collapses, and our humanness dies. Our enemies, both foreign and domestic, know how this delicate system operates. They do everything in their power to hide and subvert life’s beautiful meaning. When meaning dies, only slavery remains.
To restore liberty, we must first rebuild our families and communities around life’s beautiful meaning. When we build the bonds of family, the road-of-liberty will inevitably remain open. Liberty-based parenting and liberty-based leadership must focus all efforts on watering the seeds of meaning. When the seeds-of-meaning grow, its flowers become both full and fragrant. Only when this bouquet is put on full display will liberty’s value be recognized and protected.
LIFE’S MEANING
That which is not broken, works. We live in a universe that works, on an Earth that works, in an ecosystem that works, in a body that works, in a mind that works, and in tribes that at one time … worked, that is, they worked when our human eyes were tuned to what works. The moment we recognize what works, is the moment we recognize where all the beauty was hidden. The moment that beauty is revealed, is the moment we fall in love with the fabric of reality. When we fall in love with what works, we fall in love with creation-itself, hence we fall in love with a story, creation’s story.
We are the only species on Earth designed as story-creatures. Stories are held together by both meaning and time (and not held together by pleasure or sensation). Beauty is the marriage between things that innately work. If beauty were not married to a reality that works, if beauty were not married to a reality created by a creator that works, and if beauty's creator didn't deserve an endless series of high fives for what's been created, then life’s meaning would be invisible and buried under the chaos. When meaning is hidden, all the necessary human stories die. These stories are our birthright. These stories are the key that opens the heart, and when the heart opens, the mind falls in love with our role in creation's story. What meaning can life have if life-itself is without a role in creation's story?
If the story dies, we are left only with sensation. Though pleasurable sensations are able to be a substitute for meaning, they are a cheap substitute. Such a swap that places pleasure over meaning, will guarantee the eventual end of one's lineage. Why will a people continue making the necessary sacrifices for one another, continue sharing responsibilities, or continue building trust, if they have attributed no meaning to their lineage, thus no meaning to the glue that holds the fabric of reality together? Mere survival and mere momentary pleasures are not enough to carry a lineage forward through time.
When meaning is hidden, beauty is hidden, thus the beautiful story of life’s meaning will no longer be revealed to our children. If we have nothing worthy to deliver to our children, hence if we have lost our desire to make all measure of sacrifice for them, then our humanness and its meaning has died. What’s the meaning of family, of community, of nation, or of life-itself, if meaning has died? When meaning dies, so too will the efforts required in holding life and liberty together.
Life’s meaning will fall squarely into our laps the moment our feelings of gratitude exceed our feelings of discomfort. When we are given a story of a world that works, hence shown a world-of-beauty that works, then as stories do, they invite our participation into a system that works. By its offer of seductive awe, and by the generous souls who have delivered that story, the recipient's gratitude lifts far above both life's discomforts and personal victim narratives. When our feelings are lifted high, we gracefully enter the story’s frame as to fulfill a destiny that pays back the debts of our gratitude.
A person does not become fully human until they have received a gift that touches their heart. Reciprocity is what jumpstarts the human heart and activates both meaning and participation. And how do we repay the kindness we've received? The same way it was paid to us: we take the journey, we transport the sacred message, we give a guarantee to the creator and the creation, that by our hand, the youth of our lineage will receive the gift–––the gift that makes falling in love possible. Those who have a destiny are those with a reason to travel the river of time, are those who will endure all measure of discomfort to handoff the precious initiation-story. The story is of a world worth participating in, our world. Only when the handoff is complete has one’s destiny been fulfilled and has the lineage been secured. This road is the road-of-liberty and what is carried on this road is carried for our children. What we deliver is not just some random gift or an empty gesture, but a human birthright, a treasure of the highest value. It is from the creator, it comes through us, and is given to our children.
Since the beginning of time, or rather, since the earliest of the human species, by the emergence of storytelling and fire-making, we humans earn our dignity by passing to our children a story that activates the human soul. As without that story, a person remains mentally trapped in a cage. Our offspring welcome the invitation to become characters within a story, if it's a story worth loving. Why? Because a story worth loving is a story worth living within. As many of us know, not all people have become fully human. To preserve the meaning of our humanness, we must protect the story. And to protect the story, we must protect the road-of-liberty, because liberty is the road upon which the story travels. Life's meaning dies unless we ourselves aim to fulfill the story's destiny. So, by delivering it safely to our children, we ourselves earn the right to die at peace in the arms of our creator....the creator of all that is beautiful and of all that works.
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