Let freedom ring, let freedom ring. Reflecting on Martin Luther King day, one option is that we can view this national holiday as honoring a great man who gave his life for a cause greater than himself. As an alternative, we could also view King as one of many upon many scores of people who marched onward for a better world their hearts knew to be true. The former puts one man on a pedestal. In a way, it dissociates him from ourselves, thereby absolving us of action — he’s just this great man, a greater than life figure, and who am I? I’m just a normal person, trying to get by, what can I really do? The latter view, however, says that MLK didn’t just magically come out of nowhere; there was a massive network of support and love that allowed his ring of freedom to be heard that day. As opposed to the former, this view places the onus of action squarely on our own shoulders.

To think the world is in any significantly better place with respect to injustice today compared to MLK’s day is nothing short of delusional. The injustice has just changed forms and we’ve done a better job of pushing it further away from home. But we can make a choice, right here, right now. On the one hand, we can continue maintaining this delusion; we can avoid thinking of this pervasive injustice, and we can numb ourselves to all this pain, continuing to live in our little respective bubbles. Sure, that homeless guy on the street chose to live that way — if he’s not gonna take responsibility for all his life choices, who is?? Or yea, I mean, I understand the terrible work conditions that exist which allowed me to purchase my new Iphone version 232 SQL series for only $199, but these people working in the factories are better off now than before, otherwise they wouldn’t have taken the job to begin with, right? This is what progress is called, I have no reason to feel remorse. Or finally, to paraphrase Sarah Silverman in her “Jesus is Magic” special, I know that this diamond ring is made out of a small piece of the tailbone of tiny Ethiopian babies, but seriously, have you seen this ring sparkle?? I mean I feel bad about the babies of course, but the shine is just brilliant, totally worth it!!!

The problem with taking up the above narrative is that by denying — either consciously or subconsciously — the reality of all this injustice, we are in essence denying a major part of ourselves. Just like MLK didn’t ‘magically’ appear out of nowhere, he came from the earth and all the injustice that comes along with this whole game of living, just like you and I have. And by denying the existence of a part of ourselves, how can we ever truly love ourselves? And without being able to truly love ourselves, how can we ever offer unconditional love to others? It’s a beast of a cycle, and the head of this monster lies in our failure to recognize that this injustice really speaks as a reflection of ourselves. It’s not all the way out there, it’s all the way in here, we just have to have the courage to look inside. That’s why King always spoke in the affirmative voice — I’m not against injustice, I’m for freedom, I’m for equality, I’m for love. He intuitively knew, as any decent therapist will tell you, we can’t just remove a characteristic, or a feeling, without replacing it with a viable alternative to fill the newly created void. That’s why so many diets fail, or why so many drug addicts relapse; these addictions all serve some sort of deep psychological need for the patient, and without understanding the nature of that need — and how to build it up organically — no durable change can be maintained.

Joseph Campbell once said that if you really want to make the world a better place, you have to help teach others how to live in it. And from my often-times way too extensive personal experience here, the most effective teaching method certainly isn’t by telling or lecturing. Rather, it comes from example, living by that reality you know to be true. But, this get’s us back to our initial predicament: to live that reality, we must say YES to it all — all of that which continually creates us, including all the suffering, the injustice, the often times unbearable fact that life feeds off of death, ALL of it! And when we do this, for OURSELVES — this philosophical process of peeling away the onion layers of illusion and separation — we are left with nothing in the end. But out of this nothingness is where that eternal love grows, that sticky timeless love, that love outside the realm of dependency on the who and where and why, but that love which radiates out to not only our lovers, not only our friends and immediate family, but also to our trees, to our stars, the ants marching below us and the birds flying above us. We’re all actors in the greatest show after all. This was, IMO, MLK’s message at its core: Love is our only salvation, so let’s let those floodgates open, and let that freedom ring, freedom ring.