Khalil Gibran- Freedom

At the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom,
Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he slays them.
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You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief,
But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.
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In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle your eyes.
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And what is it but fragments of your own self you would discard that you may become free?
If it is an unjust law you would abolish
that law was written with your own hand  upon your own forehead.
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And if it is a fear you would dispel, the seat of that fear is in your heart and not in the hand of the feared.
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Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape.
These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling.
And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light.
And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.