It's Within You by Ilene S. Cohen Ph.D

Author:Ilene S. Cohen, Ph.D
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harte & Co Publishing

Slavery Versus Freedom

You may have heard of Natan Sharansky, a refusenik who lived in the Soviet Union and was denied a visa to leave the country. Sharansky was a strong-willed man, and the Soviets had a hard time breaking him. Whenever they tried, they sent two officials to question him so that he wouldn’t develop any kind of relationship with either of them. Since both officials knew they were being watched by the other, they were careful not to do anything out of line. This is classic behavior by people in countries controlled by fear.

Once, when he was being interrogated, Sharansky repeatedly interrupted the officers, saying he wanted to share a joke with them. Finally, they paused long enough to allow him to tell it. His joke went like this: “Brezhnev, the former premier of the Soviet Union, wasn’t known to be a very intelligent man. During the Cold War, in his attempt to outdo the Americans, he called in his Russian cosmonauts and told them, ‘We must outdo the Americans. We’re going to be the first country to send cosmonauts to the sun.’ They told him, ‘Don’t you realize that before we even get halfway there, we’ll have burned up by the heat of the sun?’ Premier Brezhnev replied, ‘Do you think I’m a fool and didn’t think of that? We’ll send you at night!’”

After Sharansky finished the joke, he began to laugh wholeheartedly. He then looked at his interrogators and said, “I’d like to ask you a question. I’m the prisoner, yet I can sit here and laugh at this joke. Meanwhile, the two of you are the free ones, yet each of you is terrified to laugh in front of the other one. So, I wonder, which of us is really the prisoner?” This is a powerful testimony to the meaning of a truly free life. If we live in constant fear of being ourselves, unsure of what others will think or say, we’re far from free. Rather, we’re enslaved by our own insecurities. Only after we go through the process of learning to live life beginning within can we become free people.

In his renowned book Man’s Search for Meaning, psychotherapist Viktor Frankl, a holocaust survivor, shared, “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Perhaps the greatest gift G-d gave humanity is the freedom of choice. The intellectual ability to differentiate, discern, and thereby make choices is uniquely human. When we can learn to differentiate between the truth and our subjective view of reality, and then make choices accordingly, we live up to what G-d expects of us.

You see, as long as we remain enslaved by the world around us, we can’t dedicate ourselves to our true purpose.

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