Freebird

32
protection
33
HUBRIS
LIFE CIRCUMSTANCES SWINGING BACK AND FORTH
THE SWING
DESPAIR
“Life will always have circumstances swinging back and
forth. You will have wins; you will have losses. You will have
good days and good years; you will have bad days and
bad years. The self-centered swing back and forth with
those circumstances. Ned, if you don’t figure out how to
get yourself off that swing your life will be enslaved to circumstances...
You want to be free. You want to go for it in
life. You don’t want to be controlled by the whims of life’s
circumstances. Such living is miserable. Ned, you don’t just
need a job. You’ll get one soon enough. You need freedom.”
(Freebird, Page 46)
How have you experienced the swing in your own life?
“He set the string and pen back on his
desk, walked within three feet of where I
was sitting, bent over and drilled into me
with his eyes, ‘Ned, there is no qualitative
difference between hubris and despair,’
he said. ‘At the surface, they’re opposites.
Under the surface, at the source,
they’re identical. Both are self-centered.
One is when you’re mesmerized with
yourself and convinced you’ve got the
goods. With the other, you’re still mesmerized
with yourself, but you’ve been
knocked to the ground, and you’re down
for the count. Ned, so long as you stay
self-centered, you’re going to do nothing
but swing back and forth. You’ll feel
like you change when you swing back
and forth. Truth is, you haven’t changed;
your circumstances changed, as circumstances
do. Qualitatively, you’re as
self-centered as you’ve ever been,
and you’re getting taken for a ride.’”
(Freebird, Page 45)
“It wasn’t an audible whisper, but I heard him clearly:
‘You shall have no other gods before me.’ It made me
smile. That’s the first of the Ten Commandments. I didn’t
so much hear a command—although it most certainly is
a command. I heard the whisper of what might become
a liberating way of life. By placing my eyes on me, I had
placed a god before God…me. I was worshiping me. The
thought stopped me in my tracks. I sat down at a bench
overlooking the lake. I had no idea what I was going to do
to pay the rent, but in that moment I gained a depth of
insight I had not known before.” (Freebird, Page 51)
What do you think Ned heard in the command, “You shall have
no other gods before me”?