Everybody's got to fight to be free.

Listening to Tom Petty on a long late night drive home. It really is amazing at the number of hits he's had. I think the compilation I have has something like 30 tracks, all but maybe four are legitimate hits. I wonder if he feels successful.

What amazes me about Tom Petty types is the level of commitment to who they are. I'm sure they have the same struggles as the rest of us, but I wonder if he's ever seen himself as anything but a singer songwriter. We're all people and most of us see ourselves as people, I didn't say all. But people like TP I think see themselves as a certain kinda person. And just like we need to eat and breathe, he needs a guitar in his hand and a recorder on the table.

Yet, if we were to ask TP if we were to take just one thing away from you that would change the person you were most definitively what would that be? I don't think he'd pick his guitar or his recorder.

For most of us we spend a great deal of energy suppressing the things that make us unique. Sometimes that's just for the sheer delight of staying out of jail, but for the non pervs we just haven't shed the rules of conformity that were beat into us so early from our parents and social institutions. Yet, I can't help thinking all great accomplishments come from self actualization. putting yourself out there as you are and rolling with it. It certainly is tough on the psyche, all this suppression.

And so, I think on the journey to peace or happiness, the fight to be free really is with yourself. And so the genius of TP shines, our souls exiled from our public lives do live like refugees. And the road back home is through ourselves. Truly everybody's got to fight to be free.