Lessons of the Heart

Freedom is also the knowledge that if you accomplish nothing today, in the eyes of the harried world, it is of no consequence. I once spent an entire afternoon on my belly, following a shrew through the leaf litter. .... In a way, I learned more from that "insignificant" creature in that one afternoon than I did in all my years sitting in the prison called "school." The lessons the shrew taught me are not lessons that I can put into words; they are lessons of the heart. I encourage you to take the opportunity to notice the small things and let them teach you your own lessons.

Lessons of the heart ... these are, indeed, the most important lessons available to us. They inform us in deep ways, ways that are more relevant to our unique way of being than anything else possibly could be.

Why is it, then, that so many of us ignore—or worse, actively try to shut off the calls of those lessons? Activities, ideas, individuals important to us become replaced with obligations, indoctrinations, shoulds that others want to insert into our lives – and far too often, we let them! We allow others to run roughshod over our most vital center, in an often-fruitless attempt to gain love, or friendship, or acceptance. In doing so we subvert ourselves in the deepest, most fundamental way possible.

As if those injuries aren’t enough, those of us who are parents all too often start our children down that path, in the name of “socialization” or “education” or “learning to deal with reality”. What’s worse, we tend to compound the mess by heaping messed-up expectations onto our children, or under the guise of stepping out of the programming our parents foisted upon us, giving them other – but just as harmful – kinds of programming. The more enlightened among us may rationalize these things as “necessary steps” in parenting, that the good brought will outweigh the negatives. But how can we be sure of that? What can possibly outweigh the harm of putting shackles of this sort on a young and trusting person?

The underlying message of all this bending to society seems to me to be this: You aren’t important. Your thoughts, ideas, dreams, interests, goals, fears, plans—all are less important than what others want from you, expect of you. Pay no attention to the desires and lessons of your heart; they are of no consequence.

Can there really be any doubt as to why so many individuals today, in the USSA and even among the freedom-loving family, are so emotionally drained? Parental programming, societal programming, occupational programming, sex- and religion- and ethnic- and age-based programming ... it goes on and on and on. Even politically-based programming. How many of you pro-freedom individualists have heard assertions like this one?: You aren’t contributing to the advancement of freedom if you aren’t sacrificing your life and happiness in the process of bringing down the state. Mind you, it usually doesn’t get presented that bluntly, but if you scratch at the polite veneer, that’s usually what’s underneath. And I can’t tell you how much it hurts me to recall how many times I have done that very thing ... worst of all, tossed around such thought-bombs among family and people I consider my friends.

A long time ago, I strung some words together that eventually took the form of a book manuscript. At its beginning, I defined three classes or types of freedom. But I made it clear that one type – personal freedom – was basic to the others. Individuals can feel free under a wide variety of circumstances, from the relatively regulation-free early days of the United States’ existence to the oppression of chattel slavery. Those who can accomplish it under the latter conditions, I would suggest, are among those who attend best to the lessons of their hearts.

It seems to me that much of the inner challenges I’m trying to deal with stem from ignoring my lessons of the heart, in many ways and over many years. Compounding that, I see where I have been actively (but not entirely consciously) thwarting my childrens’ developing inner compasses, if you will. It’s a lot to deal with. But avoiding or delaying handling it will not help.

“Lessons of the heart” – or the small things, as Kent McManigal also described them in his essay A Deep Breath of Freedom, from which the quote above was taken – are the things that comprise an individual’s personal freedom. The degree to which an individual respects his or her own, as well as others’ lessons of the heart, is the measure of that person’s genuine love of liberty.