Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Now, if you were the shape of an egg, why would you sit anywhere high like a wall? So the next part isn't surprising when Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. That's what happens when you put an egg on a wall. You're probably going to get a fall. But I'm thinking there had to be something wrong with the king here. Because all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again.
I can understand horses, all the king's horses, not being able to put the pieces of an egg back together. That makes sense to me. But all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again. Like I said, I think there's something wrong with the king. You've got all these king's horses, all these king's men trying to put Humpty back together, and they can't. Like I said, I think there's something wrong with the king because I think the reason they couldn't put Humpty together again is because they were walking on eggshells. Sorry.
Thanks for joining us today. We are so happy you did. And happy Freedom Week. I didn't put a podcast out on Monday. I wasn't exactly sure what to do because we know we've got Friday coming up is 4th of July. And in America, that is a huge holiday. I ran into a police officer this morning at the coffee shop that I was at where I was writing my book.
The book has come along great, by the way. I'm so excited about that book. Anyway, they came in and we started talking about 4th of July and how difficult their job would be and let them know I'm praying for them, thinking of them and all that stuff. But then we just started laughing, talking about, you know, when it comes to a party, when it comes to celebrating anything, and I get it, it's a country's freedom. It's an entire country's freedom, so we should celebrate hard. But the mixture of fireworks and lighting things on fire and alcohol, you're kind of set up like Humpty Dumpty on a wall at that point, don't you think? I mean, get the cameras out, start recording, because you're going to see some stuff go down.
But I was kind of torn because I wanted to put out a podcast Monday. I got busy helping somebody build their patio in their backyard. We moved tons. We talked about this in our last episode, I believe, but we literally moved tons of rock. pallets of papers. And I helped him again this weekend to finish it all up and we did. It looks great and everything. But Monday came around and I thought, I know that Friday's coming and I want to put out a podcast on Friday, but if I put out my podcast on Monday, I don't know if I'm going to be able to get one done by Friday. So I kind of held off. I'm kind of in hybrid mode right here. I'm putting it off a day or two before the 4th of July. So that way it isn't so long from Monday and it isn't so long from Friday. I just didn't think I could get one out on Monday and on Friday. So you're getting it now. Happy Freedom Week.
I wanted us to talk about freedom and think about freedom and live in freedom for a week because freedom is more than an event we celebrate on one day. Freedom is something that we can live in. And I want to talk about that today because we all want to be free. We all want to be fully human and fully alive. We all want to be fully loved and we all want to be able to love other people. End quote. Rich Mullins, musician, said that. We all want to be free. I agree.
We all want to be fully alive and fully human. We all want to be fully loved. We want to be fully free. We want to be fully alive. We want to be fully loved. And we want to be able to love other people. Isn't that the epitome of freedom? Isn't that what freedom is all about? I think so. I wonder, as I sit here and think about good old Humpty Dumpty on that wall, I wonder how free he felt. I don't know. All I know is it's difficult to feel free when you're broken. However, Nelson Mandelas tells us that it is possible.
For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. End quote. That's what I'm talking about here. Freedom is a way that we can live. Freedom isn't just casting off our chains, whatever they may be.
They could be all sorts of things. It could be from literally being incarcerated, literally being in chains to having change of other things in our life, metaphorically, symbolically. You know, I love to use symbolism. I love to use metaphor because I think everything that's happening around us, we can pay attention. I feel like the universe is trying to get our attention. God is trying to get our attention. Whatever it is that you believe in, that higher thing is trying to get our attention. And if we pay attention to what is going on around us, we will often get what is being said. But if we're not paying attention, we're just going through life. We're not living in the moment. We're not alert. We're not paying attention. Oftentimes we will lose what life is trying to teach us.
So I love metaphor. So we're talking about being in chains. And there are a lot of things that put us in chains, metaphorically speaking, maybe not literally. You might not be in handcuffs tonight. You might not be behind bars, but you also might not be free because there might be other things of life that are just trying to chain you up, to wrap you up. I get this image in my mind of this chain going around a heart, right? That just wants to squeeze out the life. There are all sorts of things out there that want to take our freedom. And we'll talk about that at the end here.
So Humpty Dumpty's problem with freedom isn't his brokenness. It's something else. It's his eggshells. What? No, it is. It's his eggshells. You've got to be kidding me. One of the problems of freedom, or I should say the problems of living in freedom, because freedom is, you know, go back to Nelson Mandela's quote, for to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. If we want freedom, we need to respect the freedom of others instead of trying to squeeze out that freedom, instead of making people uncomfortable or casting judgment on people or eggshells, particularly walking on eggshells.
That's one of the biggest problems of living in freedom. However, I'd also say that one of the solutions to living in freedom are eggshells as well. Are you kidding me right now? So let's talk about the problem of eggshells first, and then we'll end with the solution of eggshells. Okay. So one of the problems of freedom is eggshells, more particularly walking on eggshells.
According to Google, or maybe I should say Google's AI, walking on eggshells means being extremely cautious and careful in one's words and actions, especially around someone who is easily offended or prone to overreacting. It signifies a situation where one is constantly trying to avoid conflict or a negative reaction, often leading to a tense and uncomfortable atmosphere. End quote. I couldn't have said it any better. But going back to that quote from Nelson Mandela, here's a guy that knew what it was like to live in chains.
And he says that to be free isn't just to cast off your chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. But if you have to live around somebody that where you have to walk around eggshells when you're around them, you're never going to get Humpty Dumpty put back together again. It won't work. If you're walking on eggshells, all the king's horses and all the king's men could never even do it. When you're walking on eggshells, it's hard to live in freedom. That's why I get so angry or fed up or whatever the word you want to call it with this force out there that's trying to separate us into two sides.
And this side gets mad at that side for accusing and for pushing and bullying. So then this side responds the same way that that side responds. It just doesn't make sense to me. The truth is, if I lean too far one side or the other, I'm going to fall over. Who cares if I fall over on this side or I fall over on that side? I'm still falling over. What makes it work is when this side is in balance with this side and we meet somewhere in the middle where we at least respect and honor each other, where we at least respect each other's freedom. We enhance the freedom of others. But if I'm always getting offended at something...
and causing people to walk on eggshells around me, then I am an avenue there that's blocking somebody's freedom. Now, with that being said, I'll go back to the point of freedom as a lifestyle. I don't have to allow anybody to take away my freedom, even if I am in chains. Viktor Frankl, Holocaust survivor, because he survived the death camps of the Nazis. He said that the last of human freedoms is the ability to choose one's attitude in a given set of circumstances. So freedom is a lifestyle that we can choose to live, even if people around us are causing us to walk.
on eggshells. My next podcast is actually going to be one I'm going to do. I'm probably going to have to hold off until next week now, obviously, because it's the fourth year. It's Freedom Week. But I want to talk a little bit about mental health, which we all talk about, and mental fitness. There's a difference there.
Well, there can be a difference there. There can also be, it's all how we view those things. Because on one hand, we want to enhance other people's freedoms. We want to make somebody feel more comfortable. And if someone around me needs me to, there's a tough balance here, but if someone around me needs me to pull back on this area to help them feel more comfortable, I can understand that I can do that. But it gets to the point where I have to walk on eggshells around them because no matter what I do is going to offend them or they're overly, as Google's AI said, where they're easily offended or prone to overreacting.
that's when we have to really protect our freedom. But I don't want to get ahead of myself. I'll get to that in just a minute. First, I want to use this quote that's over 2,000 years old. It's actually from the Bible, and you've probably heard it before. The truth will set you free. I like how Joe Class says it. He says, the truth will set you free, but first...
it will piss you off. He said that in his book, he wrote called the 12 steps to happiness. So he must be a happy life for the 12 steps to happiness, which is a book. It's a handbook that are helping those that are going through the 12 step program for alcoholism, codependency, eating disorders, addictions, and such. So I think that phrase fits well in this situation to somebody that gets easily offended. It's kind of the same situation. When you're going through alcoholism, you're sensitive to being around alcohol. When you're going through codependency, you're more sensitive to those things. When you're going through those, man, sometimes the truth, it'll piss you off.
If I'm easily offended, the truth can set me free, but it's probably going to piss me off first. And from there on is where I determine whether I receive freedom or I don't receive freedom. So I would say this to those that maybe get offended easily or are prone to overreaction and you make it difficult for other people to live in freedom around you because they're always feeling like they have to walk on eggshells and be careful. Gandhi said that freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes. I think we have to give people the freedom to make mistakes, especially if we want to live.
in freedom. We need to enhance their freedom, which means we need to give them the mercy and the grace of making a mistake because we want that given back to us. I asked Google if walking on eggshells is a negative or a positive experience because we need to enhance other people's freedom. We need to be thinking about other people. So I wanted to know what Google thought. And Google's AI said that walking on eggshells is generally considered a negative experience.
It describes a situation where someone feels they need to be extremely cautious and careful in their interactions with another person. That's the opposite of enhancing somebody's freedom, causing them to be or feel extremely cautious and careful in their interactions with another person. They go on to say that fearing they might trigger a negative or explosive reaction. This often leads to a feeling of anxiety, tension, and a loss of, get this, authenticity in the relationship. I mean, it's really easy to just blame everyone else for how I'm feeling. And I want to be sensitive here. I understand there's a lot of, life can be tough. I understand that. But the truth will set you free, even if it does piss you off. If I'm going to get offended easily, and I get everyone to snap because you got to act this way, you got to, don't talk that way around me, don't act that way around me. You keep doing that after a while, you're not going to have very many authentic relationships at all. And what's a relationship if it isn't authentic? Google goes on and says, this idiom, walking on eggshells, highlights an unhealthy relationship dynamic where communication is strained and trust is lacking.
Benjamin Franklin said something that I think fits in right here. Only instead of using freedom, he used the word liberty. He said that, quote, those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, neither deserve liberty nor safety. Let me read that again. Those who would give up essential liberty or freedom to purchase a little temporary safety or worry about someone being offended or walking on eggshells. If I give up the freedom by walking on eggshells, in other words, then I deserve neither liberty nor safety.
And Viktor Frankl, the same Holocaust survivor that I just quoted a minute ago, said, quote, between stimulus and response, there is a space. In other words, between what happens and the time we have to make a choice about what happened, the time we have between what happens and our response time, Viktor Frankl said, there is a space right there. Something happens to me. There is a space before I make my decision on how I'm going to respond or react to that. Viktor Frankl goes on to say that in that space is our power. I want to highlight that too. It's our power. It's not somebody else's power. It's our power. He says it's our power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and our freedom. So if someone says something that's offensive or difficult or causes me to trigger whatever, I have a choice as to whether I'm going to allow that to happen or not. And when I choose, how I choose will determine whether I will walk in growth and freedom or whether I will just throw a bunch of eggshells. Speaking of throwing eggshells, let's talk about the solution of eggshells. I was hanging out with a happy lifer and they were telling me about how they were watching something on YouTube. They couldn't keep the garden. The garden kept getting destroyed.
So they started searching what they should do. And someone on YouTube said that you should take your empty eggshells and you should crush them up like Humpty Dumpty. They probably didn't use those words, but you need to break them like Humpty Dumpty and you need to throw them on the ground. And when she said that, I thought, what? Eggshells? That just seemed weird to me. Well, part of the reason is eggshells carry calcium and potassium or whatever else they have. And so when you throw them on the ground, those nutrients get put in the ground. But the point that she wanted to make was when you throw the broken eggshells down on the ground, the slugs and the snails that eat your garden, that destroy your garden.
Those broken eggshells are like barbed wire to them. When a slug or a snail crawls over that broken eggshell, it will slice them. It will ruin them. It will destroy them. So what's that got to do with freedom? Well, I think freedom is something you plant. I think freedom is like a plant.
George Washington said that liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth. So in liberty, when freedom is planted, it can grow fast. But if we don't protect that freedom, if we don't put those broken eggshells down, I'm not talking about walking on eggshells now, I'm talking about the solution of eggshells. If we don't put something down to protect our freedom, to protect our happy, to protect our hope, to protect those things that are important to us, because freedom is like a plant that can grow rapid. But if we don't protect it, I guarantee you, snails and slugs are going to show up to destroy that freedom.
There's always snails out there. There's always slugs out there, going back to the metaphors now, that are there that are going to destroy our freedom. There's always going to be some slug that's going to try to destroy your happy, some slimy little tiny thing. Slugs aren't very big at all, and yet they can ruin an entire garden unless you put down the eggshells, unless you put down something such as boundaries. decisions. We could do several more podcasts just on this portion right here. But for right now, and we'll talk a little bit more probably about that next episode when we talk about the mental health versus the mental fitness. Let's talk more about this then. For right now, I just want to get the idea out there that if you want your freedom to grow, it'll grow fast unless you don't protect it. And I think this is important. This matters because as Eric Fromm said, the affirmation of one's own life, happiness, growth, and freedom is rooted in one's capacity to love.
And Hazel Scott said, whoever walked behind anyone to freedom, if we can't go hand in hand, I don't want to go. That's why it's so important that we fight for our freedom, that we protect our freedom, that we throw down what we have to, to protect those things that are precious to us. Because there's always some slug. There's always going to be some snail, some slimy little tiny thing. I said thing, I didn't say people. Sometimes those things are forces that like to use people, but there's always going to be something that wants to steal, destroy the garden of our freedom.
But if we put down those things to protect, it ain't going to happen. If we can use our freedom to enhance others' freedom, to protect others' freedom, that's when freedom grows. That's when freedom abounds. However, if I'm going to get offended or make everyone have to cater to me because I have these certain things, whatever the case may be, it does the opposite. So as we celebrate this Freedom Week, and if you don't live in America and it's not your 4th of July, your Freedom Week, you can still celebrate freedom. Celebrate freedom anyway, because I think freedom is worth celebrating. Just don't light things on fire when you've had too much alcohol. That's all I'm saying.
But for Freedom Week, as we celebrate freedom, let's remember that to be free isn't just to merely cast off one's chains. Freedom is living in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. It's just like make someone happy and you'll be happy too. Respect someone else's freedom, enhance someone else's freedom, and your freedom will grow. And it will grow, as George Washington said, liberty when it begins to take root is a plant of rapid growth. Don't let those slugs, don't let those snails take away your freedom.
Thanks for listening. I hope that helped. Remember, life isn't perfect. There's an awful lot of slugs out there. But that doesn't mean that we still can't be happy. Or free, for that matter. Because isn't happiness freedom of the soul? Or isn't freedom of the soul what makes us happy?