Keeping the Sacred Flame

Sometimes we want vengeance. Someone has done something horrible to us, and there is no way to cope with it in our regular lives. We want to punish the person as we feel we were hurt. We want to strike out.

This is a reasonable emotion – but it is not a reasonable action. It is necessary, hard as it is, to take a step back. To think, to hold back action.

We want to respond in white-hot temper. We want to make other people suffer. But that solves nothing. Another person’s pain does not end one’s own. It does not change the past. Pain only adds to pain, and when someone is hit with pain, the best response is to end the cycle. It is hard to do. For some, it is impossible. But causing more pain solves nothing.

There is no advantage to adding to the pain in the world. There is pain enough. There is no payment for pain you cause another – and there is no payment for the pain someone causes you. So to attempt to exact payment with more pain solves nothing.

Questions:
When do you want to cause pain? Why?
What does “paying enough for what he did” mean to you? Why?
Do you feel that vengeance is a proper act? Do you accept it when others behave with vengeance towards you?

People speak sometimes of freedom, as though there is an absolute type of freedom to desire. And that if anything stands in the way of that freedom, it is wrong.

But freedom is always curtailed. Life has limits, and there is no way to avoid them. I cannot flap my arms and fly. I cannot run through the streets in the middle of winter without clothing without freezing. I cannot attack people without provocation without suffering consequences. In all things, I am embedded in a society, in a world full of other people and physical laws, and I cannot change that.

So what is freedom? What is justifiable, and what is extreme constraint? Where is the line?

Constraints are part of life. We are part of a society, and have to behave as such. What matters is that the constraints we place on each other, as a society, are reasonable ones. Not everyone can be the best at something. Not everyone can be first in a race. But that doesn’t mean that everyone shouldn’t have a chance to compete fairly.

What is fair, then? That’s hard to say. It isn’t everyone being forced into equality. It isn’t removing distinctions between people. It’s celebrating and encouraging the best of each person, and finding a way to reward them for what they do. It’s recognizing that we all have to work and live together, and embracing those that do the lowest jobs, not just the highest.

What is freedom? It’s the ability to work towards what makes us the best people we can be and enriches the universe as best we can. It’s the ability to live without undue constraint, without forcing such constraint upon others. It is living in community. It is accepting what cannot bend, and living as best as we can within what will.

Freedom is important. We need the ability to choose between right and wrong, to choose for ourselves what kind of life we wish for and strive for. But freedom is not absolute. Simply enough.

Questions:
What are your constraints? Why?
What would you do if freedom was absolute? What makes that different?
In an optimal world, what would be acceptable constraints upon people?