I Feel Robbed

Thanks to Kenneth Grahame

“So he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged, and then he scrooged again, and scrabbled and scratched and scraped. Working busily with his little paws and muttering to himself ‘up we go, up we go!’ until at last: Pop! His snout came out into the sunlight, and he found himself rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow.

“‘This is fine!’ he said to himself. ‘This is better than whitewashing!’

“The sunshine struck hot on his fur, soft breezes caressed his heated brow, and after the seclusion of the cellarage he had lived in so long, the carol of happy birds fell on his dulled hearing almost like a shout. Jumping off all his four legs at once, in the joy of living and the delight of spring without its cleaning, he pursued his way across the meadow till he reached the hedge on the further side.”

- Kenneth Grahame, “The Wind in the Willows”, 1908

I started listening to an audiobook of Kenneth Grahame’s “The Wind in the Willows” recently. Almost immediately – and surprisingly – I became angry. There is a reason this book is considered one of the great classics of children’s literature. The prose is beautiful and evocative, and the characters are moving and soulful. I had read it many many years ago, but had somehow forgotten all of this. I had forgotten just how rich and satisfying it was. How it makes most of today’s writing for children feel cheap and empty by comparison.

And I found myself becoming angry. Angry at the world I live in, and angry at myself. I felt suddenly, sharply aware of what I’ve been missing, as I have my head stuck in the latest news cycle, the best analysis of why Covid tyranny was never justified, all the ways the state is coming after my children... It became suddenly clear to me that I needed this kind of writing. That my brain is hungry for it, and that I’ve been starving a piece of myself for a very long time.

I felt robbed.

Of course, the person robbing me is myself. And while it is tempting to blame “social media”, or even “technology” and the ever-growing stream of non-stop information that it brings to our doorsteps, it’s really much more than that. It’s really about our priorities, what we decide is “important”, what we believe a “good life” means, and how mindful we decide to be about how we spend our lives.

I’ll be writing more about all of this in the coming weeks and months (and years, I suspect), because I believe that each one of us reclaiming our lives is what lies at the heart of reclaiming our liberty, and rebuilding a civilized world.

To that end, I will be talking later this week with my friend Susan May, who is the founder of “RiseUP with Susan May” and the RiseUP community. Susan has also created a free Facebook group called “Gather and Get Moving with Susan May”.

The Facebook group is a safe place for medical freedom advocates to connect and be inspired to action. The focus of the group is to shift away from fear and towards Love. The group does not focus primarily on world events or political activism. Instead the focus is on our individual and unique "next right step" - for ourselves, families and communities.

Susan and I will be talking live about all kinds of things, including some of the above, my new private Substack, the mutual-aid society I am building, and a little of my own personal history. If you’d like to be there for the live interview and participate, you can join her group here. She also tells me that she will be posting it publicly a little later, and when she does I will post it here.