A Big Lie our grandparents told us

Published 9:00 pm Monday, July 3, 2006

It is disappointing when beliefs we hold close to our hearts turn out to be not worthy of our aspirations. Sometimes these beliefs, or things we trust to be true, turn out to be mythology, or just one big fat lie.

The big lie I’m trying to cope with right now is something I learned as a child. The lie went like this, “The more responsibility you have, the greater the amount of freedom you will have.”

I think this lie was some sort of allergic reaction to 1960s hippies. Those of us coming of age in 1978 were taught that freedom is not something you find in a psychedelic experience, but rather something you gain through toiling.

Toiling is putting it mildly. We were told to work, work, work, and the reward will be the joy of freedom.

I Googled around to see if this big fat lie was attributed to some famous person, or if it was just my grandfather hammering this into my head.

Well, it figures that the first person Google attributes this quote to is Eleanor Roosevelt. So this idea came out of the Depression, a time that influenced my grandfather.

“Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.”

Next Google has Bob Dylan, “A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.” But Bob was raised by someone my grandfather’s age – and he was deeply influenced by Woody Guthrie. This leads me back to the Depression.

Then Google lists a twisted little zinger from Sigmund Freud: “Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.”

Freud and Eleanor were both born in the 1800s.

I think it’s time to rethink this. I’m just concerned that the connection between responsibility and freedom is no longer operating the way it used to. It seems that the more responsibility you have, the more responsibility you have. Period.

For a short window of time, in the 1990s, it seemed the more responsibility you had, the more you were paid. That equation is no longer true either.

Now, at the turn of the millennium, reality is that the more responsibility you have, the more you do, and you will not necessarily experience a reward in your paycheck, benefits or freedom.

Or achieve celebrity status.

These days people have celebrity status without any responsibility. Times have changed.

I don’t feel freer from my responsibilities. I find myself inventing ways to do less and enjoy my time more.

I measure my responsibilities and freedoms the way a dieter weighs her food at every meal. What will this responsibility cost me?

I’m a little worried about saying this aloud. First, I want to apologize to the older people who really embraced this belief and fought in wars to prove it. In that time and place these ideals seemed to go hand in hand. There was hope and possibility that this would bear fruit. And for many decades it did. For a time, freedom and responsibility were connected.

I feel like I just woke up and realized the connection has been severed.

I am just wondering how we managed to wring the value out of this and end up where we are today. We are never going to be able to sell the upcoming generation on the idea that responsibility brings freedom. They are watching both parents work two and three jobs to earn “things,” cover basic health needs and keep a roof overhead.

Freedom is still an ideal, something to strive toward. Maybe not solely by increasing responsibility, but by giving up some wants and desires and to work less for things and make more time to just be.

Writer Henry David Thoreau considered this same question in his experiment at Walden Pond and concluded, “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.”

Sarri Gilman is a freelance writer living on Whidbey Island. E-mail her at features@ heraldnet.com.