Born to live like Royalty

25 December 2013 03:40 am

What a marvel it is to be free!   What a marvel it is for a human person to be so free as never to be at the mercy of any person, place or thing.  Not marching to someone else’s drums or dancing to another’s tunes.  Respecting the wishes, the feelings, of others, yes, but not compelled by anyone or anything to do this, that or the other.  Would this not feel like ‘living like a Queen or a King’?  I do not mean, in the lap of luxury, or lording it over others.  But rather living as one wishes, ‘free as a bird’, being troubled by none, the slave of none, making one’s own choices, and taking one’s own decisions responsibly, of course, with neither malice nor harm to none.   

Would it be incorrect to say, ‘To this we human beings are born’?  Born to live like ‘queens or kings’, with heads held high,  proud, yes, proud to be human  What joy, what lightness of heart, this would bring!  Moved deep within by the marvel, the grandeur, of being human!

And what freedom!  Freedom from carrying someone else’s pack on our backs; freedom from being tied to someone else’s yoke;  freedom   from being battered and tormented by feelings such as anxiety, fear or guilt; freedom to spend our time, our leisure, in exploration and discovery. Discovering and marvelling at the world in which we live. Or at the fellow human beings with whom we live and work together. Freedom to listen to people, to understand them, to be sensitive to their feelings and needs, to reach out and help them in whatever little way we can; freedom to spend ourselves in the cause of bringing joy to the world and making it a freer, happier, place for all to live in.      



" Whenever we cling, cling to whatever it be, we foolishly think we cannot live, we cannot be happy, we cannot walk like a queen or a king, without this, that or the other. And then we become their plaything. We are controlled. We are enslaved "



Why then do we come a cropper?  Why do we allow ourselves sometimes to crawl like ants?  Why are we bent like slaves?  Is it not because from time to time we are seduced into ‘clinging’ on to some person, place or thing?  For whenever we cling, cling to whatever it be, we foolishly think we cannot live, we cannot be happy, we cannot walk like a queen or a king, without this, that or the other. And then we become their plaything. We are controlled. We are enslaved. We are manipulated.  We live in anxiety, in fear, that we may be robbed of that which seems so indispensable for us. We are indeed incapable of even enjoying the very thing we thought we cannot live without.  Born to royalty, born to live like queens and kings, we settle for a servile life of misery.  

Ah! If we but follow the trail that the sages - women and men of outstanding wisdom - have blazed for us, if we free ourselves continually, from anything or anyone, to the extent they may jeopardise the freedom to which we are born, will we not then live to the fullest stature of our human destiny?  Then we will live ‘like queens or kings’, as we were born to be - free!