The frog and the scorpion

It is the strangest thing. Freedom and no choice – sometimes they go hand in hand. My enemy stormed in my cube one day and instead of berating me, asked for my help with something. This was an area where he himself was under siege. I was under absolutely no illusion that if I helped him, he would suddenly become an ally. In fact, I knew that not only would he not acknowledge the help, he would turn it around to possibly hurt me.
But there was no choice. And complete freedom. All my life, I have yearned for big truths. Something that will come and shake the foundations of my life. Something that will lead me to give up my corporate career and join a worthy cause. Or equally, something that will convince me that I need to forget about all this spiritual nonsense and become an unabashed hedonist. Buy that condo on the beach for starters. But there are smaller, simpler truths moment by moment. And the truth of that moment was that I need to help him. And I noticed freedom around that thought. And I noticed that I had no choice but to follow through. It took me a while to reconcile that dichotomy but I think the answer is the question ‘Freedom from what?’
More often than not, freedom is taken as the freedom to do what we want. Like the freedom to pursue your happiness. Freedom and pursuit, in my experience rarely go together. The freedom comes with peace in my experience, is the freedom from the tyranny of the self. I think that is what that moment was about. For a moment, my self opened up for me to recognize the truth of the moment and there was no choice but to honor that recognition. And I also know from my own mistakes that it is an error to always equate that kind of truth with doing goo d or doing the right thing. The truth of that moment could very well have been to politely decline and tell him I was overloaded myself, which I was. The truth of the moment could have been an honest ‘ No. I am not ready for this.’
But in this case, the truth of the moment was to find time to help my enemy, despite being overworked myself.
The second guessing and the internal chatter came later. Voices, that beat me up for being so naïve. Voices, that said ‘See I told you’ when the enemy shamelessly portrayed my help to mean that it was something I should have done in the first place, so it was not help as much as a task overdue.
But still, the glimpse of that moment of truth was enough. I gave my word and followed through. A month later, on his own, he acknowledged that to his team. In truth, I did not even need that acknowledgement. And with that comes freedom. And a little peace.