When I was a little boy, I used to go to the beach and watch the birds sailing in the sky. They seem to be so free. So as I get older, I ask myself the question, how will I remain free? Recently, I was on an airplane going through international airspace from Taiwan to Europe. And I went through I transited through Hong Kong, from Taipei to Hong Kong, and then from Hong Kong through Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Poland.
And at each point, there was security and passport control and the checking of your person, people touching you, a scanner, scanners ongoing. Gosh. You ask yourself, is this not overkill? Because you are in a sealed cocoon, aren’t you? The minute you’ve entered one security situation, you don’t exit it and get back into another one.
You’re in the cocoon forever. So why do we need additional controls? And now next year, I think almost all jurisdictions, you’re going to need a transit visa, basically. Already, they have them in The United States. We don’t have them between Canada and The United States, but I’m sure it will come.
So if I’m Canadian, which I am, and I fly from Taiwan through Europe to Poland, I’m going to need a transit visa. Now, I think this is just crazy. It’s just overreach and it’s a money grab, of course. Because obviously, the bad people quote unquote are already on the ground. Many of them are born in the country from second and third generation parents and they’re angry for whatever reason.
They don’t like their new country. They’re just angry and they vent this anger in violence. Of course, they kill people which sounds crazy, but it happens seemingly all the time and you ask yourself, who do you want to kill? And I would think the average person would say no one. No religion can make a person want to kill another human being.
All religions talk about love, the sanctity of life, etcetera, etcetera. So, gosh, we seem to be surrounded by this bureaucratic curse, don’t we? And it’s growing. So our personal liberty is going to be slowly diminished. My passport at the moment, the picture on my passport has to be an eighth of an inch thick because inside obviously is some type of digital control system and I think all passports undoubtedly are like this right now.
We’re monitored, checked, facial recognition, etcetera. So ask yourself, how am I going to remain free in a very complex bureaucratic world that wants to control me? Whether I’m living in a totalitarian system or a so called liberal democracy, the deep desire is to control the individual, isn’t it? So what am I gonna do? Well, firstly, I think the only person who can make me free is me.
So I must practice inner freedom on a daily basis if I can through my prayers, through my musings, through my thoughts, in my notebook. I must say to myself, I’m an independent being. I do not have to accept anything. I must become skilled at bureaucracy. I must find a way that I can negotiate or navigate my way through this bureaucratic maze that we’re all surrounded by.
And perhaps, if I can have more than one source of income, whatever that means to me, or diminish my income so I’d have less need. And I think to a large extent as well, we need people that are like minded. We need communities that are like me. And we also have, I think, increasingly a digital footprint, don’t we? A digital presence and that can be independent.
And I don’t think we have to move to another country, but we can just have independence on an ongoing basis in that sense. Now, I think noncompliance to any kind of rule based system is great. With nonviolence, we don’t have to get angry, but we don’t have to report all the things on a daily basis. If we get some survey in the mail, we don’t have to say. And then perhaps I should own less.
I like nice things, but I remind myself that it can all go away. Everything can disappear, but will I continue to exist? I can be thrown in the street naked figuratively and I can start again. And I shouldn’t be afraid of the future, should I? And then, of course, best one of all is just think.
Learn to think. Think for yourself. Think what you want out of your piece of life. Why am I here? What’s my mission?
What happens when I leave here? When I was in an airplane looking out the window, we were above the clouds and gosh, it was magical and you think that you are an immortal being, whatever that means to you. And I try to read the philosophers of old and I I kind of like Seneca. He was a philosopher in the first century and he writes a lot and he wrote a lot of letters. And in a sense, it’s just like you’re talking to an old friend.
He could be your grandfather in that sense because his thoughts are contemporary. He struggled with freedom. He asked himself what freedom is about. The term free as a bird actually is a German expression. So when you’re up in the sky, when I was up in the airplane, I thought to myself, wow, those birds are free.
So the next time you walk on a beach, look up in the sky, see the birds flying, and think to yourself, whatever is going on around me, I’m free. And you know what they say? You know what they say? Critical thinking is necessary, especially if you’re going to be free, and critical thinking is great, truly great. You take care. Be free. God bless. Bye bye.