Born free to live free

Seeing the movie Born Free and later, reading a story about an African boy who escaped from slavery, made me think long and hard about certain things which I took for granted, like freedom...What I felt first was outrage, and these words are born from that sense of mad anger that such things happen even now...I believe that no spirit is born to be captive. Every spirit, whatever form it takes, is born free and meant to be free. Nobody has the right to break the spirit of another, whether it is an animal, a human, or a plant. We see broken spirits all around us, in the eyes of children neglected or abused by parents, relatives, friends, in the eyes of animals wasting away their power and beauty in rotten rusting cages in zoos, in circuses, in the eyes of birds held captive, in the eyes of animals being held and brutalized and tormented for research purposes, in the presence of plants stifled and stapled for "aesthetic" purposes, giants dwarfed in the name of "Bonsai"... Noone should have to live like this.. half a spirit...Live in the full glory of who you truly are.. Celebrate yourself! And don't let anyone break you down!