On rebellion

On rebellion

Exploring rebellion and its distinction with revolution leads you to a funny place.

There’s the insistence that revolutionaries are those who have sacrificed so much for the freedom of others, and in so many earnest senses this is of course true. And gratitude towards them is deserved.

But the spin is there are so many who are forgotten. Whose insistence wasn’t on finding freedom in a material sense. And their living example was different.

It was built on a deep rebellion. A recognition of living free moment to moment. Not of re-ordering or restructuring the external system; of worldly chaos. But rather an internal restructuring.

Not of disobedience, but of following internal rules irrespective of whether they clashed with external ones.

There isn’t one name that has passed down through the passage of history, that has been universally revered, that hasn’t ultimately been someone who has followed an internal call.

The march of true rebellion is silent, it may echo, but its echo comes from the majesty of the quiet internal voice not the dismantling and rebuilding of an external one.