The Freedom of Wild Things #014

Good morning once more, and welcome to everyone.

We recently talked about wilderness, about the value of wild things, about nature, and how nature is connected. But it occurred to me that there is also a spiritual value of things that are wild. If you think of it, we admire wild things, and we often despise or dislike things that are too tame. When we want to say that something is really great, we say, "Oh, this is wild," while when you say, "This is tame," it's almost like saying, "this is lame." This is something that you don't need to consider.

Or if you think of positive images of freedom, of self-realization, these are often wild things. When we think of an illustration of freedom and fulfillment, we think of wild geese flying in a formation high up in the sky and being free. Free as a bird, right? Free as a wild bird. It does not mean free as a bird in a cage.

And a caged bird is the worst thing; it's the one thing nobody wants to be. It is a metaphor we use for, in older times, women who were confined to the household. This typical housewife of the '60s, we would say, "This is, you know, like being in a cage." Even if it's a golden cage, it's still a cage. So, nobody wants to be in a cage. Nobody wants to be tame. Nobody wants to be predictable. We all want to be wild and free, and freedom and wildness go together because wild means free, acting following one's nature, and not following social demands and social norms.

This is why, when we see the "Pirates of the Caribbean," for example, Jack Sparrow who sails into the sunset—like in old westerns, the cowboy rides into the sunset. This riding into the sunset is a visualization of the idea of wild freedom because the sunset is not the sunset on the other side of a city. The cowboy is not riding to the city center. He's not riding into an office tower. He's riding away from civilization into a place that's wild.

When we watch "Star Trek" and see where these crews, that have over the years represented Starfleet, where they go when they go where nobody has gone before, then they are going into a place that's wild. They're going into a place that is not regulated by Starfleet, that is not part of the civilized world, but it is a place that is out there, that is wild and free, and full of promise.

Because that's the other thing about wild versus tame: tame means predictable, following the rules. A tame dog will not do anything to surprise you. It will do exactly what you want; it will eat when you want it to eat, it will go out with you when you want it to go out, it will sit down when you tell it to sit down. Being tame, being useful, being rule-following, means that there is no surprise; means predictability.

On the other hand, when you think of a wild life, what this entails is somehow a promise of something surprising. "I'm going to live in Alaska. I'm going to live in the wilderness," and so the point of it is that Alaska is not like an office. It's not like I go there at 9, and I see my sheep, and at half-past 9, I go and look at my lettuces which I plant in Alaska, and at 10:00, I'm going to fish some salmon. If it was like this, it wouldn't be wild. The point of wild is, "I don't know what will happen. I'm going there, and there are these big forces which can be dangerous to me. People get killed in Alaska; that's the point, right? It's dangerous, but this danger is what keeps me alive."

And we have a deeply rooted affinity for danger, and you see that when civilization becomes too overbearing, and the regulations and the rules become too dominating for our lives and threaten to take away our freedoms, you see that people escape into danger to compensate for that and to keep alive their feeling of freedom. This is why we have the development of all these dangerous types of sports: parkour, where people jump over empty spaces between buildings, or they climb up walls of houses and jump from balconies and do all kinds of things that can kill them; or wingsuit flying, or crawling up to a skyscraper and up the antenna and sitting up there and taking a selfie. You know, these extreme sports, even something relatively predictable like bungee jumping.

And so, we have all these dangerous sports because being in danger gives us this feeling of being alive, which we don't have when we follow rules. When we follow rules, we are part of the machine. When we escape into freedom, then we are also in danger, and this danger is what makes us feel free.

So, let's keep this in mind today. But I don't think that we need to be in danger in order to be free. We can be free within a society that is organized and that obeys rules. There's always space for freedom in our everyday lives, but we have to get it, and we have to claim it, and we have to actually do something with it.

I think it is because we don't use the freedoms that would be available that we feel so caged in this society, and that we feel the need to escape through these more dangerous ways. We just need to identify what it is that takes away our freedom. These are things like social media, like one's phone, like TV, things that steal our time—the time in which we could be free, the time when we are out of work but not yet asleep. This is a time where we could be living our best lives, but now, we are not using this time. We're giving it away, and then we daydream of some radical way of asserting our freedom.

So, I would like to leave you with this thought for today: try to see how you can perhaps develop your own freedom within your life, how we can all develop this freedom within our lives. For me, for example, it is this: it is talking to you here. What I'm doing this moment is an expression of my freedom. Nobody makes me do this, nobody tells me to do this. I'm not getting paid for it; I'm doing it because it's something I want to do. And every one of us has such an opportunity. Have a camera? Do the same, or read a book, or write something, write a blog, or go for a hike, or go for a marathon, or go for a bungee jump if this is your way of asserting your freedom.

But we can all do something more; we can all do something that fulfills us, that gives our lives meaning, and that is not regulated by this society that tries to take away our freedom and make us into little machines, into little interchangeable units. We don't need to agree to that. We don't need to be human units. We can be original. We can be strong human beings if we decide to be and if we claim back this freedom that is ours.

Thank you, and see you tomorrow.