“It is always through the recognition of what is vulnerable, for what can easily be stripped free from our awareness, that makes a person take nothing of its preciousness for granted.”
– Modern Romanticism
“Nothing in life is free,” as such is the clear saying from those who have lost, nearly lost, or have kept to what remains so that it never becomes lost. Such a quote would refer to what life does not offer, being its freedom as a gift. Since pain, unto loss, is always the most bountiful discipline, we recognize one thing of both ourselves and each other, for how each of us is equal: vulnerability.
Through vulnerability, we recognize what can easily disappear, to never return. Through vulnerability, we can comprehend our own strengths. We can understand that were we to naively believe nothing can go wrong, then this is to take a preciousness for granted. To what we hold to be precious, means that in the identification for its meaning to us, that it is fragile. Just as a mother would not want her child to die, so she protects them, clings to him, keeps them close.
There are those, however, who would view a thing, such as one’s “rights” as meant to be permanent. Though, if this is to believe a right is not, instead, a privilege, then one can believe such a concept as a “right” is meant to be permanent. Would we take our rights, or our freedoms for granted? If so, then we become a slave.
To take life for granted is to become a slave, because we will naively blunder across it committing the same mistakes, to never learn. It is to take something for granted, that we believe such a “preciousness” to be faultless. How can anything be faultless, without fragility, if we are claiming it to hold meaning to us? And, if it holds meaning, then we’d protect it only because, like life, it can disappear without that guardianship.
What right is not earned? What life is not earned? What person so enslaved, doesn’t become freed to relive the days when they were simply free?
To victimize the self, to then believe others are at fault for one’s own irresponsibility, is to take life for granted. It is to renounce the freedom of being responsible, of having control over the outcome of one’s own life. Would one not keep hold upon self-reliance, one makes themselves the slave to external governance. Life is taken for granted, when we do not believe we are ever at fault. We take ourselves for granted, when we believe us to always be innocent or victimized in every scenario. We become a slave, because to take ourselves for granted is remain ignorant to what lessons can be learned from mistakes, and thus, remain dependent on external governance over one’s life.
Though, to find another person to be precious, to believe someone so close to the self as literal family or close to it, can be faultless, means one never cared for them. It is to take one’s loved ones for granted, in believing them perfect as they are, by never associating their imperfections and flaws with the self through the employment of human empathy.
Life is taken for granted, when a person believes it is or should be faultless and without concern. People become or remain as slaves when they have fled from or renounced the greatest of life’s chores, which is to earn one’s freedom. As freedom is earned, through being responsible, a person becomes as identifiable to anyone else who attained the same level. That same level, attained through the correct path, which would pertain to being equal to them by such hardship it took to acquire it. Though, even at such a level where freedom is earned, to drop one’s guard, to cease protection upon what is viewed to be precious, makes one vulnerable to those who might strip these earnings away. This is equality, by realizing that one’s vulnerability is how a person both suffers and becomes strong when past such hardship.
Modern Romanticism 