That some would have you believe your liberties are fragile and must be protected by government, or that you must trade your liberty in one thing to have it in another, is in the very nature of tyrants, despots, and town clerks. Your freedom is your domain, alone. There is no other ruler than yourself. If you choose to trade off some portion of your liberties to another purpose, for instance working in an office for pay, understand that it still exists, however hidden, and is only misplaced. You can no more rid yourself of the responsibility for your freedom than you can willfully stop your breath. Thus, when others assume your rights and act in your name, you must protest, if you can. And if for convenience you remain silent, you betray yourself. You may obey the town clerk to achieve some other purpose, but the freedom you have sacrificed is not extinct—it is simply held in jail by another who holds a gun and that you must obey for the moment in order to survive. Better to survive and breathe another day that you may later reclaim the use of the freedom you have lost. You don’t die for liberty. You live with it. It is yours by birth. It will die with you, so be aware of what you do with it. Liberty is not a right proscribed in an ancient document, but like a body part that will not be severed. It is not misspoken to say that freedom is in your heart, however much it is consigned by your head. It is that central to your being. And if, by circumstance, you are in some way unable to advantage your freedom because of health or age, it is the responsibility of those who care for you to carry out your mandate, if only out of respect for themselves and their own time of weakness. Yet, do not presume to act upon the freedom of others. You act for yourself alone. You may speak in the vernacular, or pose your thoughts in grander speech, yet the meaning is the same. You may live in some forsaken reach of Earth where the daily toil of survival appears to rule your every moment, but nothing is different. Your liberty is there within you, to find and use as best you can. The more freedom you are able to exercise in your life, the happier you will be. If all the liberty you are allowed is to play the flute, then master that, and perhaps it will become the foundation of more. You do what you can and there will be more to do. The deer in the forest understands all of this, as does the hawk and the bear. It is only the human being, so capable of being self-aware, who obfuscates the obvious with dogmas and political faiths. It is only the human being who is capable of rejoicing in their own freedom. So, rejoice!
