Freedom.
Just another word?
10 OCTOBER—My brother was five when he slipped and fell in an oyster bed slashing his left shin nearly to the bone. Seeing the damage, my parents bundled him into the car, leaving my sister and me in the care of their closest friends. It was a warm summer weekend, and our two families were camping on the east side of the Olympic Peninsula along the shores of Puget Sound.
It was a long drive on narrow roads to the nearest rural hospital. Once there, my brother waited hours to see a doctor. The small emergency room was over capacity, backed up with victims of a terrible car crash. The worst had happened to an automobile full of young people who’d been drinking.
Paramedics carried mangled bodies through the waiting area. One young man had gone through a windshield, and as he was wheeled past my father caught a glimpse of exposed brain tissue where part of his skull was missing. His injuries were beyond what could be repaired or survived, but he was still alive—and screaming.
It was well after dark when my parents returned to the campground. My brother’s injury had been stitched and bandaged—a significant scar mars his left leg to this day. What remains for me is another kind of permanent mark: the vivid image of a young man, almost still a boy, screaming as he died.
Was it that night or the next day when my father told me what he’d seen… and heard? My brother has no memory of it. As any good parents would, ours managed to shield him from the worst of what was unfolding around them. I was not spared. My father decided I was old enough to know the details—and the consequences of drinking and driving.
That was fifty-three years ago, and I understood even then, at age nine, that I did not want to die as that young man had. As children often do, I grasped something profound: Our states of mind matter in the moment of dying, and I did not want to die with a mind overwhelmed by fear.
* * *
This memory was much in my thoughts during the warm days of late August as my birthday drew near—always an opportunity to reflect on the swift passage of time and winter’s relentless approach.
The question of how to die well is a defining one because its answer lies in how one chooses to live.
In those final days of August I seized upon a conviction as absolute as the one my nine-year-old self had arrived at: I want to be free when I die. I want to be free of all the limiting thoughts and beliefs that currently bind me—all the baggage that clutters and shackles my mind. I’m thinking specifically of ideologies, political or any other kind.
And it occurred to me:
Being attached to any ideology is like standing on top of a mountain and looking in only one direction—mistaking it for the entire view and missing everything else.
And I wondered:
What if I’m missing something important? What if my beliefs, opinions, and convictions are actually wrong? Or are, at best, only partially correct? What if I were to simply admit to myself: “I don’t know.”
And then I thought:
How genuine is my understanding—to say nothing of my kindness and compassion—if it is limited by deeply held beliefs and values, by ungenerous judgments, and a subtle, poisonous contempt for others?
How accurate can our vision be if we see the world through an ideological veil—through blue or red-colored lenses? Mistaking one view for the entire landscape is a form of delusion, however enticing it may be. It is bondage at the deepest level.
I’ve lived most of 62 years far too self-satisfied in my certain opinions, unaware of my biases and how they distort my perception, believing I have a unique insight into the truth of things. It’s exhausting because there’s so much territory to patrol and defend.
I’m weary of my certainty and petty animosities. Instead, I want a mind that’s less certain but freer—a mind free to be curious and unafraid. I want a mind that’s wide open like space and able to love in a way far beyond what I am now capable of.
The tentacles of my biases and assumptions are slippery, difficult to see, hard to grasp, and deeply embedded. My quest for freedom is nothing other than an effort to free my mind so that I might see the world as it is and others as they truly are—free of distortion—through a clear lens of love.