Today I’ll start with a quote from one of the essays in Aminatta Forna’s The Window Seat:

What bothers people about foxes is that they will not be controlled and humans are control junkies. We love an ordered environment and there is none more so than the city. …[W]e have become fearful of what is chaotic, the uncontrolled and uncontrollable. We do not care to be reminded that we are living beings, for that is to remember that we are vulnerable.

I don’t agree with this completely. Although the city provides lighting, plumbing, roads, traffic control, and other things that order our environment, it contains an enormous amount of diversity in both people and activities and plenty of options involving spontaneity.

I also don’t think that most humans are control junkies, though too many of us are. When I’m in my people mood, as opposed to the mood in which I think people are the worst thing that ever happened to Earth, I want people to be free to do what we want. Everyone won’t make the same choice, so lots of interesting things will be happening. The only rule is not to hurt anyone else.

While I can imagine that world, it’s not a world most people would want to live in. For me this describes the world of native Americans pre-Columbus, specifically some of the low-hierarchy tribes, maybe the Lakota Sioux? Definitely the Ohlones. There was plenty of leisure time to socialize and create, health and longevity if you survived childhood, and the majesty of the heavens streaming overhead every night. On the other hand, most people never traveled more than 20 miles from their birthplaces, although nothing was stopping those who wished to do so, and there were no operas or symphonies as far as I know.

What appeals to me about living that way is both the lack of worries and the lack of other people telling you what to do. I mostly live that way as a retiree already, but there are a lot of people trying to put laws in place that would control what I and others do, most of which make life harder for the people at whom they are aimed.

Forna speaks further about foxes: …[T]he fox [is] a creature that chooses to live close to humans but refuses subordination, has submitted neither to domestication nor taming, well not been to anyone‘s will. …Those of us who find beauty in urban foxes do so for the same reason their presence provokes anger in so many, we admire and envy the foxes for their defiance, for choosing freedom over safety.

I do admire wild animals who ignore or exploit humans, and I’d like to think I would choose freedom over safety. I’m pretty safe now though, and more important, people are more social than foxes. I don’t want to live without other people around me. I want to live surrounded by people who believe in my freedom as much as their own.

Recently, I have had to embrace my own vulnerability; I broke my right wrist while taking a small but foolish risk. A cast seems to cut pretty seriously into my freedom since there are a lot of things I can’t do by myself, but I am very thankful for my friends and especially my husband, who is making my life as easy as he can. That is to say, my current freedom is due to the actions of other people, and that is also a nice sort of freedom to have.

Choose freedom!