destined to make meaningful choices
Goals
To critically assess …
- How freedom requires boundaries to have options
- Whether making a choice is an act of courage
- How freedom can seem real and be an illusion
- Whether we are free to choose the waypoint of life
- How having nothing to loose is a form of freedom
- Whether optimism and pessimism make any sense to fate
Damien’s Dæmon
Damien lay on a hilltop,
a clear day with nothing to stop
his view of the valley far below.
Which way will you walk down,
said a voice with no sound
that seemed to come deep in a dream.
Doesn’t matter, they’re all the same.
Like the path by which I came
to the top of this magnificent hill.
Any path that’s descending
will eventually be ending
near the road that leads to my farm.
Then appeared around him
four walls surrounding,
each closed to the valley by a door.
Damien make a choice,
came the dæmon’s drowsy voice.
Walls make it matter what you’re after.
Damien awoke to no visible walls.
No voices, no choices at all.
But as he stood, he imagined four doors.
Choice will open onto
what most you want to
when the courage to do so is yours.
What do you Think?
- Imagine you are in an open field and can walk any direction. Can you choose a direction if there is no differences in direction? Is there actually choice?
- Does freedom need limits for there to be choices. Is that ironic? Does it take courage to choose what we want?
Fates
On a drizmal night as might have been centuries ago, cloud-smeared shadow below moon-glow.
On cobblestones that click the nails of a dog, two top-hats bob in the fog.
Dawn and Dusk stride vaguely as persons, wide and brisk as their purpose is certain.
Listen my friend, before we enter the play. There’s a matter that merits me something to say.
Don’t worry about Eve, her anxious resistance. She plays no part in any future performance.
Departed with payment, a coin for her passage. The children of Eve now receive our message.
I trust you’ll respect compassionate persistence and yield the grace I seek in this instance.
May we enter together and pool our abilities. Cast trivial paths among fixed possibilities.
Frame doors of choice, illusion of freedom, all wending toward the same location.
Allow improvisation, departing from script provided no narrative waypoints are skipped.
Their world’s a stage and that stage, our world. From the smooth of life ’till twisted and gnarled.
So indulge the actors, these children of Eve, dispensing their fate as if it were free.
What do you Think?
- What became of Eve? Do Dawn and Dusk have freedom of choice?
- If the destination is set, but I can chose the route, is this freedom or determinism?
Shoes to Lose
The hotter the coffee, the faster it cools.
Those with more have more to lose.
Material luxuries. Rarely necessities.
Yet loss, to them, feels unfair and cruel.
Those with nothing live a simple truth
that all they have is nothing to lose.
What they don’t have, won’t split in half.
And the discalced have no shoes to lose.
There are those among the affluent few
feigning blind rather than feel confused.
The fall of inequity, fast and small.
A micron long ❉ enough to reach us all.
So woe to the rich who shelter in luxury.
Tip of the iceberg in a sea of humanity.
Biding distance, pretence of ready,
while cutting the line at the hint of discovery.
Then business as usual, opening early.
But the world now turns to matters locally.
To opening closets and sharing a view,
we still have enough with a few fewer shoes.
What do you Think?
- The discalced have no shoes to lose. Is freedom just another word for nothing left to lose? What does that mean, anyway?
- This verse was written during the pandemic. What prediction does it make for how the pandemic changes the world?