“I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns
tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys.” – George Orwell
The quote above brings to mind the reflexive power of our
actions. I feel like the lesson Mr. Orwell is trying to convey is similar to
the one a parent might try to impart on his or her child when saying ‘mind your
own business;’ to try to control every aspect of someone else demands every
aspect of yourself. In other words, both a prisoner and a guard spend all night
in jail. In a sense, this idea is similar to that of the expression “the mind
takes the shape of what it dwells upon.” Basically, we humans are largely
shaped by what we do. Time spent angry or unhappy makes us unhappy people, time
spent free and passionately, on the other hand, helps develop us. In today’s
world of bureaucracy and big government, perhaps there is a lesson to be
gleaned from this. Maybe our micromanaging, paranoid and fear-mongering
governmental practices are self-fulfilling; perhaps we bring about the world we
fear by constantly choosing to live in it.
-Reid Williams
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