Comfort’s Cost

Comfort’s Cost

We speak of freedom as if it were flight,
but forget that wings come with wind,
and the sky offers no shelter.

We crave a trail without any fight,
to arrive certain without seeking,
at a shore with ocean never crossed.

We close our eyes and dim our light,
choosing roads that ask for nothing
but to quietly surrender our might.

I woke up this morning thinking about the idea of freedom and how that relates to my creative process class and specifically AI. It’s so easy for students, teachers, professionals, everyone really, to just ask machines for answers. But I wonder if what we’re actually being offered is something else: the ability to avoid being responsible for our own life. That’s getting pretty big-picture and I very much like AI and use it daily. I even wrote a bit about it.

It’s human to want the right answer but it’s dangerous when we forget that some of the most important things in life aren’t answers but questions and choices. (This principle shapes how I use AI too. I never start, or end, with AI.)

And so I began writing. Thinking I might make a tweet or more likely something to share with friends or even more likely, no one.

What we really want

Most people claim to want freedom but freedom is not only the absence of constraint. Freedom includes the weight of choice and responsibility. To choose is to face uncertainty, consequence, and the burden of one’s own agency.

Many refuse to risk failure but prefer to be told the answer and not be held accountable. This gifted clarity is a cloak for authority. To be told what is true, what is right, and what to do removes the burdens of freedom and grants the illusion of peace.

It’s not just school

This pattern isn’t limited to education. I think about Christianity and about faith. About how often belief is sold as certainty, as a kind of spiritual safety net, a list of truths that will take away doubt and fear. But faith isn’t certainty. Faith is choosing to live inside the unknown with integrity. The moment we trade that mystery for control we lose something sacred. We lose autonomy.

And so, that lead me to writing a poem. More as an exercise for my mind than a finished poem. My mother likes poetry and is a bit of a writer herself. I thought that maybe this could be something we could do and then talk about together. In the end, I was as happy with the poem as I might have a right to be. I don’t know that it is Good as in capital G, but it feels pretty good sitting there in text. Maybe I will do a few more.