Barrett Dorko
12-11-2006, 04:09 PM
“It just feels good to walk around wherever I want to go. I missed that.” After a year in the war zone that was once just the country of Iraq, my son Alex says this to me as he walks along The Strip in Las Vegas. He was there while his wife Melissa did some work for her marketing firm at a convention there. A year of effort and worry and sweat – a lot of sweat – was behind him, but not far behind.
“Tenar did not feel joy…She put her head down in her arms and cried. She cried for the waste of her years in bondage to a useless evil. She wept in pain because she was free.
What she had begun to learn was the weight of liberty. Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden…It is not easy. It is not a gift given but a choice made.”
This passage is from The Tombs of Atuan ( http://www.amazon.com/Tombs-Atuan-Earthsea-Cycle-Book/dp/0689845367/sr=1-1/qid=1163336566/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-7213658-3536738?ie=UTF8&s=books), the second book in a trilogy by Ursula K. Le Guin. This fantasy has always been important to me and these few lines describing a young woman named Tenar saved from the strictures and dictates of a belief system bent upon controlling her and others are something I actually carry in a notebook often at my side.
Over on the NOI web site my friend David Butler occasionally refers to what he calls “neurologic freedom” which I gather means something akin to movement unrestricted by fear or pain. I like this, but I never read about it without wondering what must be done, understood and permitted in order to get our patients there. I don’t think that they can be led there so much as permitted to go.
I’ve noticed a distinct freedom in my own movement since Alex’s return to the States. I walk differently, breathe more easily and, without question, I can speak of my son without the paralyzing fear and emotion that has tread beneath my surface since before his leaving last year.
We must not believe the many, who say that only free people ought to be educated, but we should rather believe the philosophers who say that only the educated are free.
Epictetus
Greek Stoic philosopher and former slave
When I think of freedom I always think of Frederick Douglass ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass),an American slave born in 1818 who remains so powerful a presence today that a statue ( http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/31492.html) is to be erected in his honor in 2007. Writing of his life and work in The Demon-Haunted World – Science as a Candle in the Dark ( http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469/sr=1-1/qid=1163337825/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-7213658-3536738?ie=UTF8&s=books), Carl Sagan says, “Slaves were to remain illiterate” and Douglass himself wrote, “To make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one…it is necessary, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason.” Forbidden to be taught how to read by his master, Douglass taught himself, escaped to the relative freedom of New York City and found himself massively daunted by the enormity and strangeness of that place. I doubt he had any sense that they’d eventually erect a stature to him there, but he knew this; he knew that his enslavement had nothing to do with the chains or the laws or the attitudes of others, it had only to do with his own ignorance – and that ignorance could always be overcome.
It seems that Tenar’s revelation, that freedom is a burden; that it follows a relinquishing of belief and an escape from the familiar, was Douglass’ as well. It is mine, it is Alex’s and it could be our profession’s if only it could find the courage and strength to read, to learn and to grow thoughtful ( http://www.somasimple.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1411).
When enslaved to methods and protocols of care that are merely convenient and chosen primarily for their tendency to keep the money-making machine of therapy running smoothly many therapists grow quiet and complacent. Many endure pain and make no effort to employ their own methods for it. Perhaps they sense on some level how heavy the load of freedom might be to bear.
They should bear it anyway.
“Tenar did not feel joy…She put her head down in her arms and cried. She cried for the waste of her years in bondage to a useless evil. She wept in pain because she was free.
What she had begun to learn was the weight of liberty. Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden…It is not easy. It is not a gift given but a choice made.”
This passage is from The Tombs of Atuan ( http://www.amazon.com/Tombs-Atuan-Earthsea-Cycle-Book/dp/0689845367/sr=1-1/qid=1163336566/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-7213658-3536738?ie=UTF8&s=books), the second book in a trilogy by Ursula K. Le Guin. This fantasy has always been important to me and these few lines describing a young woman named Tenar saved from the strictures and dictates of a belief system bent upon controlling her and others are something I actually carry in a notebook often at my side.
Over on the NOI web site my friend David Butler occasionally refers to what he calls “neurologic freedom” which I gather means something akin to movement unrestricted by fear or pain. I like this, but I never read about it without wondering what must be done, understood and permitted in order to get our patients there. I don’t think that they can be led there so much as permitted to go.
I’ve noticed a distinct freedom in my own movement since Alex’s return to the States. I walk differently, breathe more easily and, without question, I can speak of my son without the paralyzing fear and emotion that has tread beneath my surface since before his leaving last year.
We must not believe the many, who say that only free people ought to be educated, but we should rather believe the philosophers who say that only the educated are free.
Epictetus
Greek Stoic philosopher and former slave
When I think of freedom I always think of Frederick Douglass ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass),an American slave born in 1818 who remains so powerful a presence today that a statue ( http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/31492.html) is to be erected in his honor in 2007. Writing of his life and work in The Demon-Haunted World – Science as a Candle in the Dark ( http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469/sr=1-1/qid=1163337825/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-7213658-3536738?ie=UTF8&s=books), Carl Sagan says, “Slaves were to remain illiterate” and Douglass himself wrote, “To make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one…it is necessary, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason.” Forbidden to be taught how to read by his master, Douglass taught himself, escaped to the relative freedom of New York City and found himself massively daunted by the enormity and strangeness of that place. I doubt he had any sense that they’d eventually erect a stature to him there, but he knew this; he knew that his enslavement had nothing to do with the chains or the laws or the attitudes of others, it had only to do with his own ignorance – and that ignorance could always be overcome.
It seems that Tenar’s revelation, that freedom is a burden; that it follows a relinquishing of belief and an escape from the familiar, was Douglass’ as well. It is mine, it is Alex’s and it could be our profession’s if only it could find the courage and strength to read, to learn and to grow thoughtful ( http://www.somasimple.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1411).
When enslaved to methods and protocols of care that are merely convenient and chosen primarily for their tendency to keep the money-making machine of therapy running smoothly many therapists grow quiet and complacent. Many endure pain and make no effort to employ their own methods for it. Perhaps they sense on some level how heavy the load of freedom might be to bear.
They should bear it anyway.