If I took identical twins, separated them at birth, and sent one to a Catholic mission in the Orient and the other with rebel pirates in the Caribbean. If I provided them with no knowledge of the others existence, of their origins, race or creed. If I gathered each of them together at the end of life, after survival, learning, adapting, losing and winning. If I saw how two genetic carbon copies of each other became such different beings, and how easily one could have been the other based solely on which I picked up first. If I listen to both life stories, both of which are truths, both of which were carved and hardened by circumstance and time, despite their beginnings as the same exact things. If I could show you how they spoke, argued, cried, laughed, loud and quiet. If I could tell you how one looked a monster and the other looked a saint, and yet they both spoke of pain, hope, killing and mercy, love both won and lost. If I could show you they now seemed the same once again, these different beings of appearance, despite polarised existences for a lifetime. Each just as likely to be the other but for a twist of fate. If I could convince you to sit in the space between the pirate and the priest, where neither is right or wrong, good or bad. If you would listen past the clothes, beliefs, deeds, hear the people beneath. . We don’t get a choice how we begin either. Let’s then not allow that to dictate how we are. We aren’t the things we do or the things we become, when in reality, true choice is mostly a myth. Freedom isn’t having the option to be the one twin or the other. No one knew which would go where. Freedom is the acceptance of both, a mind that chooses to listen to the spaces in between. Dismissing “right wrong good evil” Commandment nonsense to make more room for pirates and priests. The closer they get, the further we’re free.
TARAS KRIPPS 