Quote of the Day

"Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty."
- Frank Herbert


When you first read this quote you may be a bit confused; it may sound contradictory. How can a person, when seeking freedom, become a captive, and how can a person, when seeking discipline, find liberty? But make no mistake, it's exactly true. Consider the following example. Say an obese woman wants to lose weight. What would she have to do? Obviously eat clean and exercise. The absolute wrong approach to achieving her dream slim body would be what she has always done: eating whatever she wants and whatever in sight (especially sugary and fatty foods) and never getting any real exercise. In order to reach her goal, this person who loves food and has attached so much physical and emotional pleasure to the act of eating must deny herself the instant gratification she has always sought.

So say she decides to go on a strict diet and exercise regimen. She vows to start eating healthy and to exercise intensely at least 4 times a week. Ice cream and potato chips will be replaced with lean fish and vegetables, and lying around all day watching TV and surfing the internet will be replaced with running on the treadmill and weight training for at least an hour a day. She hypes herself up and gets really excited and actually sticks to her diet and exercise regimen, but only for a couple days before she starts losing motivation and determination and starts reverting back to her old ways. And once she "fails" and ends up binging and being inactive all day again she does this for a few days and then finds new motivation and determination to start over again. This time, she promises she will start over for good and never cheat again. But she always finds herself, sooner or later, losing juice and giving in to her old lifestyle.

She honestly wants a great body and wants to be healthy, but she also loves eating a lot and the taste of junk food so much that she believes she just cannot let it go. The more she tries to "seek freedom" -- in other words, seek junk food and hedonism, the more she becomes a "captive" to her desires, a captive to her greed and attachment. On the flip side, the more she tries to "seek discipline" -- in other words, seek a genuine desire and effort to eat healthy and exercise regularly, the more she will find "liberty" -- the more she will be freed from the chains of junk food and indolence that have held her prisoner for so long.