Not so long ago celebrated the 20th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence. That’s all I have suggested an idea: what is all the independence and freedom, and what they should actually be. I was no longer thinking about the independence of Ukraine, and personal individual independence of each individual as well as Ukraine, first of all people who live in it. And if people will be feel free and independent and the Ukraine will be an independent, not only formally on paper, but actually.

The question of freedom and independence is very, very philosophical. And freedom itself is different. There is freedom of economic (or material), there is a political (eg political party of the same name, but our site is not about politics), but higher freedom from all possible – a spiritual freedom. A person who has it, can, even while in prison to feel free like a bird. This is a good story, the protagonist of which is the famous Greek philosopher Diogenes (the one who lived in a barrel).

Once Diogenes was caught by slave traders and offered for sale in the slave market. But Diogenes kept his head and began to cry vengeance from his cell: “Slaves come here soon, the owner sold!”

Apparently Diogenes really felt free, even being in a cage. Unlike us, the ordinary people who are dependent on so many things (there’s one on which there chocolate, beer, internet, work, sex, TV, underline). As a rule, all men are slaves to their many addictions, habits, attachments and there’s nothing you can do about it. Although there is a way out and the way in which you can get rid of slavery and achieve real freedom. This path is as old as the world. The Apostle Paul in his epistle to the Romans calls: Thanks be to God, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. Free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. (Romans 6: 17-18).

It gets the path to true freedom lies through the victory over sin, because only really be free to whoever wins not others, but ourselves. And is not that the chief who controls the other, and the Head of the (here intentionally written with a capital letter) who controls them. Therefore, true freedom comes only when everyone can be the boss for himself.

Although for centuries, people have repeatedly waged a bloody war and revolution for freedom.

But their heroic struggle for freedom in the majority of cases, and remained fruitless, because it does not bring any happiness or harmony, instead of just death and destruction. For it was not a struggle for the freedom of the Spirit, which carry more difficult than the struggle for the freedom of political or economic. And indeed, it is easier to fight with their external political adversaries than with their own sins and shortcomings. It is easier to fill someone’s face than, say, to stop smoking or drinking.

So it turns out that many of the alleged and strive for freedom, but not to the freedom that is necessary, because it can not be a slave to be free (as well as the chicken can not fly). Moses was already forty years led the Jewish people in the desert, not to find a place where there is oil, and to the Jewish people got rid of the slave mentality, learned to think, learned responsibility.

After all, freedom, first of all, implies responsibility. A free man must be able to take responsibility for them and their actions must be able to think for themselves and make decisions. Unlike the slave who has no responsibility, responsible for his entire boss, the chief guru, or as it once was, “said the party should be, said the Komsomol – there.”

And finally, I wish all the sly to learn responsibility and become the chief of his life (which is not easy, but no one promised the easy way).