Ch. 10- Conclusion

The entire chapter is worth reading and writing down. It had so much food for thought. I think it is too long to type up the whole thing...so I will be selective and just photocopy the chapter for my personal files to be referred to...

p252...Before undertaking this book, we were too busy meeting the demands of every present moment to wonder how all the moments fit together. Now, at our halfway point as HSers, with 3 children launched into college & 3 still in elementary & high school, we've paused to consider where we've been.

We have chosen to be free & to educate our children in freedom. In this Land of Liberty, few make that choice. Jack Kerouac wrote in "The Vanishing American Hobo," "There is nothing nobler than putting up with a few inconveniences like snakes & bugs for the sake of absolute freedom." But Jack Kerouac was an eccentric, as were Walt Whitman & Henry David Thoreau & Thomas Jefferson & every prophet sacred or profane stretching back at least to the fugitive who saw a burning bush & came reluctantly back to preach freedom. Those who choose freedom almost always seem to be eccentric misfits, & those who choose slavery almost always seem well adjusted by comparison. Our freedom is always at risk, but we are its only real threat. The smoke of idols, the clang of cymbals, the shouts of apostates din the creed that freedom is too risky, too uncomfortable, too painful to bear. We've seen people start for freedom & then pause to consider how unreasonable a choice it was in light of what everyone around them knew to be true. Many have choked off their lives by limiting their choices to what they could see.

p253...[When we married...] we took a different view & made a different choice. We found that conventional wisdom was false. Many things that people say are impossible are in fact very possible if you simply live in the present moment, deal with the challenges of that moment, & let the future wait until it becomes present. We found that these 2 ways of living form 2 different habits of thought & life. The practice of taking conventional wisdom to heart & always preparing for the future often means that you never really live in the present, & therefore, that you never really live at all, because life is only in the present. The future, with its fears & opportunities, is always a figment of our imaginations. The practice of living in the present moment anchors us in reality & truth, & there is enormous power in reality & truth. Anything is possible then.

p254... We were not immune to the fears & anxieties of a society that seems increasingly to be a society of fear,