I find that for living in a place and a time which claims to be moved on the promotion and proclamation of our freedom, our unique state of living, our superior and blessed-ness and open door policies, we don't seem to know very much about being free.
Even our defining terms of freedom are limited. We have borders and rules cornered by grand gesture, by specific conditions, by haves and have nots. Our freedoms, so to speak, are disconnected and broken down by how we may or may not use them. We decide to live within the standards of someone else's dream life, within the rules of a society we did not create, are not responsible for, or often times, even supportive of.
My question is: do we know this? Do we recognize these inconsistencies, do we blink past the catch-twenty-twos of it all, or do we not even see them in the first place?
Do we know that by a certain age or time we are to have met certain goalposts, checked the boxes of our neatly ordered listed lives: career, car, house, promotion, true love, procreation, retirement fund, Caribbean cruise, death.
Did I get that order right?
Truthfully, it's quite fine. It's perfectly fine, in fact. It works for many people, those who have genuinely wanted it and those who haven't. Perhaps it works less for the latter, but it does, shall we regrettably say, suffice. If nothing more, it gets us through certain conversations, it keeps people smiling at our correctness, at our normal ways, it makes no one too nervous about how strange we really may be, about how what we actually desire may be a tent in the desert or a vow of silence, or living momentarily, or uprooting rather than standing still. It saves us from explaining ourselves to generations that most likely will not follow your crazy train of thought, barreling by them in one fantastic, nonsensical blur.
But, really: Have we forgotten about plans B through Z? Have we completely leapt past our most natural desires, our first needs as not just mankind but as ourselves? As just you, influenced by just you (imagine that), what would you do?
Really, I know I'm only describing a certain class of individuals. Everyone is not a wanderer, just as everyone is not a homebody. Everyone doesn't need stability in all four corners, and everyone doesn't need a fence and a lawn and a golden retriever. This is, more or less, about our expectations for each other. It seems that we are lately more concerned at discomforting others by our lives than we are with simply being ourselves.
And I realize that I have currently cornered only the American dream, not necessarily or certainly not the rest of the world, full of their marvelously different perspectives and priorities. Although maybe. Who knows. Maybe there is a universal longing for all versions of a white picket fence. Quite humbly, in all respects, and in regards to almost all things, what do I really know.
This is more of a what-if scenario. As in, what if we were true to what we really wanted, instead of what is wanted for us. What would that look like, and where would we be. How would our time be spent, and would it matter more or less or equally, would we be happier, would we struggle for better reasons, would we gain less, would we find more. If we are permitted freedom, why then are we not free?
If we are tied more to our obligations or our mortgages or our shitty work conditions or our relationships or our size or our cell phones, what matters? Did we skip something vital, did we miss the point, did we give away something we needed in order to keep our rights to freedom? Are we self-caged, are we creating bars and walls where there need not be?
I don't know. Maybe, or maybe not. Maybe we trap ourselves and then cry for help. We wear shackles, we carry keys. I'm confused.
For the most part, I do my best to remain unapologetic in regards to individualism. Certainly for whatever amount of goodness we possess we have an even bigger corner of ourselves that remains flawed. We are no good, for whatever reason. But, goodness or lack of goodness aside, we are also not the same. How should we be expected to want the same things?
Perhaps we should, for just a moment, divert to those whose lives are dictated for them. In simple ways, of course. We won't lean all the way into arranged marriages and the like, a conundrum, though not necessarily catastrophe, of its own. What of those whose daily doings are merely chosen for them, perhaps by life's often unfair handouts, by family carriage, by default? What about the older Asian man at the Green Clean who offered to carry my five (yes, five) coats to the car for me? Could he be hating his life so much, sweating out stains from our tablecloths, our evening wear, and still offer this simple act of kindness?
Heavy, he said. Despite the fact that I managed to carry them to him in their original rumpled state, I accepted, humbly, for the help of one person to another. From one person doing what they were taught to do by the person before them, who seems to have no real qualms about this lot in life, as far as I can tell.
The problem is, we have an altogether difficult time realizing that we are not made by what we do. What we make of what we do, however, is a different thing entirely. We aren't shuffled back and forth, just a part of the masses, of wherever we fell from, we aren't just a fractioned part of it all. We might spend our days hating where we stand, only to later (and, luckily) discover that there is more to ourselves. We are not the closing shift at some superstore. We are not just waitresses or receptionists. Hell, we are not just top-rated attorneys or corporate leaders. (Which we should all remained un-fooled by. Career-driven can't, by simple nature, always equal what we all individually expect out of a happy life.)
Though, I get it. More money would make it easier, or feeling full of purpose would give us the boost we need to stand on our own every morning, to down coffee heroically, and go out and change the world before us.
Or not.
The world is the world, in the end, and like it or not, there are those invisible and natural borders that keep us going a certain way. There is a structure that, short of overthrowing everything, we can't exactly get around. Yeah, you need to do certain things a certain way to survive in a certain place. Right?
It really doesn't make any damn difference what you have if you don't know what you have. If you can't love your life, or if you love it conditionally, or only occasionally, love it for its mere existence. Love it as a discipline, see it as your challenge, not your misery. Savor your personal time for being spacious, and glorious, and untampered with. Even if those hours require another form of daily grinding, another hub of another wheel, make them good. They are, after all, yours to make. This is your freely given life, however many aspects of it seem to be pushed upon you. Push back. Reject, perhaps no, but give yourself a little more space. Make some room for whatever gets you through it.
Find better reasons for living. I really can't say that we are meant to love every aspect of our lives at all times. More than likely, we will never be that lucky. What we find fortunate in our existence can be small. But grandeur is not the point. And quantity is not always the best way to measure what we enjoy about just being here.
And if all that is clear to you, if you really stare down your best days against your worst and still come up short, even with your head clear and your best intentions present, then the next step, obvious and frightening, is to go forth. The world is big, evidently. What won't work for you here may surprise you in a different place. So find a new way, or make one yourself, build the road that you're walking on. This type of bravery is rare but surely never regrettable. See what else you can find to be blessed by, moved by, changed by. It could take a lot, or a simple turning around, to the left, to the right. Perspective is a funny thing.
I guess it's mainly just a readjustment of where we invest, and how much, of what we let in and what we would rather just release. I think that is the main diversion we take from what real liberty can do for us. We are stuck in the minor dilemmas, or we dwell in what is plainly not worth it. We stick ourselves without a way out. But there's always a way out, even if it is of our own making, even if it hurts in the process, even if it takes everything we have, physically and otherwise.
So? Let's let go. Let's be free.
