I have been thinking a lot about freedom lately. I am struck with how it complicates our world, our lives, and our beliefs.
For the last couple of weeks, freedom has been on my mind. I volunteered to work on an event for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called The Art of Expression. I mean, what could be simpler for me than celebrating the right to create art? Look at what I do for a living, how I live, who I choose to have in my life…simple right? Not so much.
It – freedom, that is – kept popping up everywhere I turned. It’s like that old phenomenon that when you buy a red car all of sudden you see a million red cars on the road. I chose to work on an event about freedom, and – presto – freedom is all over my roads.
It was on Facebook when I logged on each morning, a constant feed of posts about anything and everything people wanted to voice. It was at breakfast, lunch and dinner conversations. It was at the baseball game. It was at a bar when a guy talking to me got mad and stomped off because he found out I didn’t share his political views. It was at a party with girlfriends where we talked about kids, love, life, sex and our bodies.
I spent a bunch of time thinking about people that use hatred to spread propaganda and resort to violence and killing. I was shamed to realize how often I was willing to jeopardize my own freedom in wanting my government to control and stop these people.
Freedom wasn’t letting me get much sleep.
I thought about being a woman in America in 2011. Boy howdy, that got the freedom ball rolling.
It’s everywhere – freedom, lack of freedom, struggles for freedom, and limits on freedom. Make it stop. My mind was racing, my passion was running hot, John Lennon was rockin’ my iPod, my soap box was getting a new coat of paint. I am woman, hear me roar!
And then, last night, I stoked up my first fall fire in my fire pit. I sat for hours mesmerized by the flame. I fell into a fire trance. And there was freedom, dancing around my mind again. But, somewhere in that hour and burning in those flames, the realization that freedom isn’t the least bit complicated came to me. Freedom – itself – is as simple as simple gets.
When I wake in the morning, my eyes open as simply and naturally as our bodies were designed to work. It is the steps I make after leaving my bed that complicate everything.
Freedom is designed to open simply and naturally. It’s the steps we choose to take with it that makes it so damned complicated.
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