I can tell you from experience that farm-raised birds are are lazy and don’t really enjoy flying, even when you kick at them.

Wild birds will jump up and scare you so bad you forget you’re carrying a gun. 

As you can imagine, quail “hunts” with farm-raised birds are a very, very different experience from hunts with wild birds. 

But it makes sense: this is what happens when you cage a bird. If he sees the cage as his home, he won’t even know you opened the door. If he doesn’t, he’ll shoot out and fly as hard as he’s ever flown until he’s out of sight. 

Same phenomena appears in mammals: domestication looks like it ruins them. 

We want our pets to be mild and gentle and kind, but there’s a fine line between docile and lazy.

The greatness and grandeur of an animal is closely linked to its wildness, or its freedoms to obey The Call of the Wild. (Harrison Ford’s film depiction of that famous book was an interesting depiction of this.)

You may think your dog runs fast, but I would wager a wild wolf could run it down faster than Sparky could blink.

When we think about freedom, we think of a soaring bald eagle, flying high above the trees, possessing an inspiring amount of calm and power—not a parakeet, charming as he may be.

There’s nothing wrong with parakeet, but there’s a reason he’s not on our coinage or currency or flags. We are, after all, the land of the free and the home of the brave. (Further south you may find a Caribbean island sporting a parakeet, I don’t know.)

There’s nothing wrong with a caged animal, but in a chicken fight I bet you wouldn’t put money on the one raised in your daughter’s chicken coop.

What’s this mean for us two-legged mammal-types?

We’ve all been given an incredible amount of freedom to go and be whoever we want to be, do whatever we want to do, think whatever we want to think; but we are a generation who has failed to put our wings to good use.

To find a native-born American who dreams boldly and doesn’t fixate on obstacles is becoming rare; we farm-raised Americans are lulled to sleep, spending our creative energies on comforts, pleasures, pacifying ourselves with carbohydrates and salaries (see Nassim Taleb for more on this), explaining away our mediocrity by becoming a victim and pointing fingers.

On the flip-side, I have friends who immigrated to America as adults and who provide that comparison for me; they’re (typically) full of life and the call of the wild, and I see myself, in comparison, as a recovering farm-raised, corn-fed steer for slaughter. 

What does it mean to enjoy freedom afresh? 

It means to stop looking at yourself as the hero (or victim) and start dreaming a dream that will take everything you’ve got—and more—to accomplish. That dream will lead to a life of flying, not sitting.

One of my favorites:

“To dream the impossible dream

To fight the unbeatable foe

To bear with unbearable sorrow

And to run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong

And to love pure and chaste from afar

To try when your arms are to weary

To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest

To follow that star

Ooh, no matter how hopeless

No matter how far

To fight for the right

Without question or pause

To be willing to march, march into hell

For that heavenly cause.”

What do you do with freedom? You fly. You fly like the eagle on the wind.

God gave you power for a reason; put it to good use, I say—the eagles agree.