How Do You Sum Up A Life

Posted by Bobby Gulshan on July 2nd, 2007 filed in liberty

How do you sum up a life? For most of us, the first impulse is to say the obvious things, He was kind, he was smart, he was caring. With a little more reflection, we start to share stories, remembering the special moments, the things he said, the things he did. Eventually, we begin to realize just how that life touched ours, the things he taught us, the ways he made us feel. Realizing what that person meant to us as a friend, a brother, a son, our tongues fall silent and we begin to speak in the language of the heart.

Liberty Jaswal was born on July 1st, 1978. For all of those who shared the gift of knowing Liberty, that was an auspicious day. Perhaps when looking for good things to say about people, we allow ourselves to ignore their faults. Truly no one is perfect, but in speaking of Liberty you would be hard pressed to express anything short of extraordinary. By the time he graduated from high school it was clear that he possessed a rare intellect, an intellect that would carry through to Berkeley, and eventually land him at UCSD’s graduate department of philosophy, where he was working towards his PhD. For Liberty, nothing escaped rational explanation; all of the world could be laid bare by systems of logic. If you read this and didn’t know him, you might think him cold. Yet therein lies one of the things that made him so unique. He was the antithesis of cold. You could see the warmth in his eyes. You could see the compassion, the caring. And it was indeed because Liberty believed the world to be subject to rationality and enlightened thinking, that he believed we could do better as a species.

There was always a cause. In high school it began with the Straight-Edge movement, and Liberty pledging himself to a clean, healthy lifestyle. While others around him began earnest flirtations with drugs and drinking, Liberty spoke about healthy bodies, and healthy minds. This quickly evolved into an ardent vegetarianism, eventually leading Liberty to a fully vegan lifestyle. He loved animals. Not just the family dogs, but all animals. His compassion deepened and his conviction drew focus. Liberty and Jake, his best friend, took their conviction to the streets, literally, and protested the cruel treatment of laboratory animals and the continued degradation of our earthly home. To be sure, this was not youthful posturing, but rather the logical end of well thought out and deeply felt beliefs. Liberty believed we could do better. He showed us this, simply by being himself.

The strength of Liberty’s personality, indeed of his very essence, was evident to anyone who ever met him, if even briefly. Task yourself to find someone with a negative opinion of him, and you will fail. Rather, what you are likely to find are people who will tell you that Liberty changed them for the better, that Liberty made them want to be better. Whether by force of his conviction or the effect of his love and compassion, Liberty has touched us all. He devoted himself to his family, to his friends and his colleagues and his truth. All of us are who we are because of Liberty.

How can you sum up a life? There is no simple way. Let it be said then, that our lives are made richer for having known Liberty, while the world has grown darker for having lost his light.

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