Adonis Diaries

The Ordeal of Freedom? Is hope playing the vanishing act? And replaced by what?

Is hope playing hide and seek in the discourse on Freedom?

What redundant choices are the players busy prioritizing, sorting out, rating, erasing, replacing, settling their mind upon….?

Is it the proper time to write down the goals we want to achieve?

The long-term and short-term goals that will set us “free” from all the diversions we are bombarded with?

And what kinds of goals we favor?

Amassing wealth for the sake of wealth?

Communicating with as many people so that we get first pick on opportunities, looking us in the face, and seeing nothing of value, for our lack of observational skills?

Goals for what kinds of success? In what and for what?

For a 15-minutes recognition as a unique individual, among the billion surrounding us? Billion of mankind, still in the phase of survival, waking up with the sole purpose of finding something to fill the stomach, anything to eat…?

For a recognition by the community that we are a worthy member, hard at work, steady in following customs and traditions…?

For a recognition by the extended family that we were not such a big loser, an irredeemable loss after decades of nurturing, in pushing us around to get at par with the neighboring family children…

Is it Saul Bellow who wrote:

“The Russian poets Mandelstam and Sinayvsky restored the soul for the million of Russians, on whom Stalin poured the Old Death. Reciting poetry to fellow convicts (mostly political prisoners) and by writing about it in their journals…Perhaps to remain a poet in such circumstances, is also to reach the heart of politics: The human feelings, experiences, human form and face, recover their proper place, in the foreground…”

The Ordeal of Freedom is to learn and absorb the private cruelties and brutalities, where “More die of Heartbreak“, all the kinds of “New Deaths“.

“Never mind rising entitlements, never mind the luxury life-style… All this is seen by remote centers of consciousness, which struggle against full wakefulness. The opening of a true consciousness to what is actually occurring would be a purgatory”

There aren’t any words for what happens to the soul in the “Free World“.

The ordeal of freedom, having to take responsibility for our own choices and decisions… being cornered and forbidden to blame our shortcomings and problems, on external circumstances and conditions, foreign pressures, hidden powers exercised by Big Brothers…

The ordeal of freedom, and hope gone out the window.

Having no time to focus on “Who we are“, or having plenty of time to reflect on our needs and wants, but feeling too shy and coward to confront the savage ordeal of freedom, telling us that time is money, time is invested for success stories, time is not a luxury to revert to our soul and discover our personal dreams…

Time is not a luxury to empathize with friends, to take all the needed time to listen to the aches and pains of friends, to contribute our energy and some time to other more needy people…

This cold world in this ravaging ordeal of freedom…

Czeslaw Milosz wrote in Annalena:

“To whom do we tell what happened

On the earth,

For whom do we place everywhere huge mirrors

In the hope that they will be filled up

And will stay so?”

Note: I read this term “The ordeal of freedom” in “Reading Lolita in Tehran“