Thankful for Literature: 'Freedom to Breathe'

Part 2: 'If,' by Rudyard Kipling

I am very thankful that Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote his short essay entitled ‘Freedom to Breathe.’ Solzhenitsyn lived the Soviet Union and wrote literature protesting Communism. This essay, in less than two hundred words, communicates the joy and blessing of freedom. It has helped me more fully understand what it means to enjoy liberty.

A shower fell in the night and now dark clouds drift across the sky, occasionally sprinkling a fine film of rain.

I stand under and apple tree in blossom and I breathe. Not only the apple tree but the grass round it glistens with moisture; words cannot describe the sweet fragrance that pervades the air. I inhale as deeply as I can, and the aroma invades my whole being; I breathe with my eyes open, I breathe with my eyes closed – I cannot say which gives me the greater pleasure.

This, I believe is the single most precious freedom that prison takes away from us: the freedom to breathe freely, as I now can. No food on earth, no wine, not even a woman’s kiss is sweeter to me than this air steeped in the fragrance of flowers, of moisture and freshness.

No matter that this is only a tiny garden, hemmed in by five-story houses like cages in a zoo. I cease to hear the motorcycles backfiring, radios whining, the burble of loudspeakers. As long as there is fresh air to breathe under and apple tree after a showed, we may survive a little longer.