This may seem like a tall story, but there was once a teenage girl
who didn't get along with her parents. "I'm sick and tired of all
these oppressive rules," she would complain. "I feel just totally
controlled. I want to be free!" So she ran away from home. "Now,"
she thought, "I can stay up all night and listen to loud music and
watch awful movies."
When she told her friends of her new freedom, they said, "Great!
Let's celebrate and get drunk."
"Yeah, why not?" she replied. "I can do anything I want." So she
drank and laughed and vomited and passed out on the bathroom floor.
A little while later, she met an older girl who seemed to be
experienced in the ways of freedom. "Hey," said the older girl, "to
be free, just take these pills and free your mind from all your
cares." So the teenage girl took the pills and felt strange and
didn't sleep for three days and then closed her eyes and woke up in
the middle of the following week.
Another time she met a young man who seemed to know about the free
life. "Let me help to liberate you," he said, putting his arm
around her. And so they went to his van and drove to a vacant lot
where the young man kissed her and "liberated" her and told her to
leave and drove away.
Many days later--days that passed without recognition or
remembrance--the girl found herself sitting on a bench waiting for a
bus in the middle of the desert. As she sat there gazing at the
distant mountains, conscious of little more than the rising heat,
she heard herself say, "I don't know what to do."
"Whatever you do will be foolish," said a voice from behind her.
"What?" the girl asked with some surprise, not sure whether she was
listening to a person or a hallucination. The voice was that of an
old woman with bony hands.
"Good decisions come from good values," continued the old woman, as
she watched her knitting rather than the girl. "You have thrown
your values away and so your decisions are poor."
"But I wanted to be free," the girl answered.
"There is no freedom without rules," the woman said. "Without rules
there is only slavery."
"You know nothing about me," said the girl, her anger rising. "I'm
not a slave to anyone. And I can do anything I want to. So just
be quiet."
As she got on the bus to yet one more destination, the girl turned
back to the old woman and said, "I'm sorry I got mad. The truth is,
I'd do anything to be happy for one hour."
"That pretty well sums up your entire problem," the old woman said.