By Philip Suzara
Pondering… as I sit here at the edge of my mythical life pond.
One can see many things happening at the edge of life’s pond, as in any pond. Decisions are made there, life changing decisions, defining moments… to get in the pond, or not. The pond is encircled by its edges in different forms and kinds: straight, jagged, rough, rocks, pebbles, sand, soil, or mud. Very much like people. No matter the differences we have, we all belong there… around the life pond, inside, outside, at the edge, but there.
Freedom is both a concept and state that we come to learn of at some point in our lives, it comes at different times and in many different ways.
My epiphany of freedom came to me when I was a young boy; I came to read something from DC Classics Comics on a feature on The White Stallion.
It was about this wild and beautiful stallion roaming freely in the open by the mountain ranges. That stallion was much coveted by some Indian tribes and soldiers from the US Cavalry with both camps having made several unsuccessful attempts to capture the elusive stallion.
One day, the two forces seemed to have cornered him near a cliff but, instead of submitting to any one group, it jumped off the ledge - a leap to sure death.
I remember the last lines of the story, it was something like “and there the stallion was, almost with a smile on his face, dead but free!”
If animals can have that desire for freedom and liberty, what more with people? It was a very poignant, moving, and empowering scene - and I have romanticized and embraced it since.
In 1973, The Hues Corporation popularized the song Freedom for the Stallion written by Allen Toussaint. Its words, to me, echoes that very saga of The White Stallion in the DC Classics that opened my mind and my heart to the boundless treasures one will find in that concept and spirit of freedom. It is that very concept that unleashes one from the bounds of limitations; it is one of deliverance, of transcendence, of liberation.
Read and feel the song, go prance along with the stallion in his playground, breathe freedom into your soul.
Live!
“Freedom for the stallion
Freedom for the mare and her colt
Freedom for the baby child
Who has not grown old enough to vote
Lord, have mercy, what you gonna do about the people who are praying to you?
They got men making laws that destroy other men,
They've made money "God"
It's a doggone sin,
Oh, Lord, you got to help us find the way
Big ship's a-sailing, slaves all chained and bound,
Heading for a brand new land that some cat said he upped and found
Lord, have mercy, what you gonna do about the people who are praying to you?
They got men making laws that destroy other men,
They've made money "God"
It's a doggone sin
Oh, Lord, you got to help us find the way
Some sing a sad song
Some got to moan the blues
Trying to make the best of a home
That the man didn't even get to choose
Lord, have mercy, how you gonna be with people like John and me
They've got men building fences to keep other men out
Ignore him if he whispers and kill him if he shouts
Oh, Lord, you got to help us find the way
Oh, Lord, you got to help them find the way
Oh, Lord, you got to help us find the way”
This song is exactly talking to us, about us, for us. You can see the horizon of our reality not so far away. It summons us to think about those whom we care about who, as of yet, cannot be part of charting their future. It is up to us, who can, and have the wherewithal to deliver a brighter tomorrow for our children; a deliverance from the darkness that looms over our heads.
We cannot, and should not, allow our children to wake up to a bleak and dreary world that we, collectively, have insidiously allowed to rule our very lives. It is time to be awakened from our misery, break the shackles that bind us into oblivion.
Our every move towards liberation and freedom begins when we push back every time we are pushed against the wall – no matter the consequences. Freedom is never served on a silver platter, in fact, it is never given. One has to demand and fight for it – or die chasing freedom;
in the manner of The White Stallion, or as Cyrano de Bergerac succinctly said it “with steel in my heart and a smile on my lips”.
Pondering… as I sit here at the edge of life’s pond.
Philip Suzara
Creature of God. Child of the Universe. Global Citizen. Lover of Life. Freedom Fighter. Agent of Change. Lone Wolf. Occasional Consultant for Strategic Communications.
