At the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you prostrate
yourself and worship your own freedom,
Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though
he slays them.
Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the citadel I
have seen the freest among you wear their freedom as a yoke and
a handcuff.
And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the
desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you
cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfillment.
You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care
nor your nights without a want and a grief,
But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise
above them naked and unbound.
And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights unless you
break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding
have fastened around your noon hour?
In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these
chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle your
eyes.
And what is it but fragments of your own self you would discard
that you may become free?
If it is an unjust law you would abolish, that law was written
with your own hand upon your own forehead.
You cannot erase it by burning your law books nor by washing
the foreheads of your judges, though you pour the sea upon them.
And if it is a despot you would dethrone, see first that his
throne erected within you is destroyed.
For how can a tyrant rule the free and the proud, but for a
tyranny in their own freedom and a shame in their own pride?
And if it is a care you would cast off, that care has been chosen
by you rather than imposed upon you.
And if it is a fear you would dispel, the seat of that fear
is in your heart and not in the hand of the feared.
Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace
the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the
pursued and that which you would escape.
These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that
cling.
And when the shadow fades and is not more, the light that lingers
becomes a shadow to another light.
And thus your freedom when it loses it fetters becomes itself the
fetter of a greater freedom.
