“Freedom is just another word for nothin’ left to lose
Nothin’, don’t mean nothin’ hon’ if it ain’t free, no-no”
Me and Bobby MCGee, Janis Joplin
Nothing left to lose is an interesting concept, right there along with freedom. One holds the potential of captivity, while the other dangles the promise of something to hold onto. The actuality though, is somethin’ quite different.
Neither is anything but a concept, a concept for a concept who plays with and believes in concepts. Realizing that, deeply living that is the point of all the stories of enlightenment and awakening. It is what so many fear, why the word woke is in vogue amongst a certain crowd. It’s impossible to control someone who has nothin’ left to lose.
The concept we are isn’t interested in seeing that it is made of concepts, fights the ideas with every bit of concept it has collected, and will continue to do so. That’s its thing. Some of us are more invested in our concepts. They’ve made us feel powerful, rich, important all while deeply embedded insecurities writhe within. The concepts are bandages that few see. We don’t see each other. We see overlays of ideas and thoughts, beliefs and other seemingly important stuff.
These overlays move us, bring us to tears, make us rage against the man, and ensure that we engage with the dance of life. They are at the bottom of our need to scream at the horrors, to share our anger, to hear ourselves speak against the wrongs being done, the people who don’t see, the hurts being inflicted, the dark places we are headed.
They are also our concepts of love and compassion, of anything short of genuine unconditional love, even the ideas we hold about unconditional love. Unconditional love has nothing at its root. We are that nothing. We are unconditional love. It’s why we care even when we pretend not to, why it feels wrong when we act in violent ways, even though we stuff those feelings. It is why we hurt when we hurt others. There are no others. There is only This.
Concepts aren’t wrong. They just aren’t real, but nothing is, so how could concepts be? Concepts: ideas of life and death, right and wrong, good and bad, you and me. They make the world go round and round, in dysfunction and in love’s perfect function.
Freedom is just another word for nothin’ left to lose. See what concepts are: thin air taking multiple shapes and forms, looking good to some and bad to others, appearing as right to many, while absolutely wrong to those who don’t know and just can’t see. Realization is the recognition that concepts are dancing as you and me, placing unwarranted and unreal death sentences over our apparently living heads. When you truly grok it, there is nothing left to lose, for there was nothing here in the first place and will be nothing here regardless of what we do or say.
And yet, the doing and saying happen. They can’t not. You and I can’t not do what we are doing. We can’t not dance our own personal dances. We can’t not play our roles on life’s stage. If there is a reason, that’s the entire reason for incarnating.
What are we really here for? There are so many possibilities. To break free. To feel caged. To rage against. To stand for. To feel and recognize what feels good. To feel and let it tear us apart. To learn. To grow. To live. To love. To hate. To spiral backwards. To experience dying (even if it isn’t real).
We are here for this. We are this. We are the dance not just the dancer, the sensations not just their feeling. We are the entirety.
There is nothing to lose. How could ‘What Is’ lose anything. Good news or bad, there’s nothing to gain either. This simply Is and isn’t simultaneously and that includes all the attempts to gain and the consuming fear of losing.
We are here to do what we are doing. We don’t have to figure it out. We are already doing exactly what we could only do. Figuring it out may seem to be part of the doing. It’s a doing that is undoing itself with the doing, with each bang of the head on the brick walls before us. Eventually that point of futility will present itself and rather than instant and overwhelming depression, a smile will appear.
Ah … I am free. I have always been free. There is nothing but freedom overlaid with crazy concepts of captivity.
Does the angst end? Maybe. Maybe not. If it’s part of my story it appears to continue, continues to appear. If my angst is part of your story, it too will seem to continue, but it’s not the same. It doesn’t have the same charge. Rather than raging spewing dis-temper, it’s peaceful here inside the storm.
Having nothing left to lose isn’t a bad thing. It’s the home of the truly free.
Amaya Gayle is the author of Actuality; infinity at play, published by New Saram Press. https://amzn.to/3Rd4CTY
Video image: Janis Joplin, Me and Bobby McGee
Amaya Gayle 