Freedom: It's All in Your Head

"Freedom from the past, or anything else for that matter, always comes in the very instant you stop thinking about it."

--Notes from the Universe

A Post in Which I Delve Into an Old Cliche

 "If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they're yours; if they don't they never were." 

--Richard Bach 

This quote feels like the worst possible cliche', but sometimes cliches have a ring of truth to them that just cannot be denied.

I had a conversation with a friend this week in which we were discussing marriage. Both of us have recently had moments in our marriages where we were just not sure we wanted to carry on -  and both of us have found this moment to be oddly affirming of the relationship at the same time.

Sending my husband off to Burning Man on his own made many of the people I talked to nervous. Aren't you afraid he'll___________? (Fill in your worst relationship fear.)

Fifteen years ago I would have been, but now I truly feel that he has to be free to do those things I fear most in order that he not need to do them. It's ironic and hard to understand on some level, but the freedom to leave, to stray, to cheat, to be yourself in all of your worst and best ways, is utterly necessary - I believe - for a healthy relationship.

On the flip side, my husband said he was amazed at how being away and having total freedom made him love and appreciate us and just want to come home and be the best husband and father he could be.

And yet it was only hours after he came home that we had a moment in our marriage that we had not yet gotten to - the moment of choice. 

It is a moment that I think all couples get to - some sooner, some later - where they have to decide if they are going to keep going or turn back. When you are dating this moment is not always easy, but there is less on the line. When you are married or have been together for a long time, or have children together, this moment can scare the bejesus out of you. 

It's the moment when you have to chose to stay, to work, to persevere even though - at that moment - you may not want to and it may seem easier or preferable to go. 

If either one of us had chosen to walk away, it could have all been over. The thirteen years of marriage, the fifteen years together, the family gatherings, the co-parenting, the best-friending....all of it. But we didn't. We turned around, faced each other again, and made it through. 

I have no illusion that this is the last moment like this we will have. I think the longer you stay in a relationship the more likely you are to have them. Sometimes a long term relationship can feel like a noose around your neck. 

Other times, of course, it can be as comfortable as a fuzzy old bathrobe, and - if you are really lucky - as fun as a roller coaster ride. 

When I was younger I thought I had to be ever vigilant, keeping other women at bay, watching my husband at all times for signs of infidelity. 
Now I know the truth: If you love someone set them free....and demand your own freedom. 

Only under these conditions can the relationship thrive and flourish and end up being somewhere you both WANT to be.

Off the Hook

"Tell everyone you know: 'My happiness depends on me, so you're off the hook.' And then demonstrate it. Be happy no matter what they're doing. Practice feeling good, no matter what. And before you know it, you will not give anyone else responsibility for the way you feel – and then, you'll love them all because the only reason you don't love them is because you're using them as your excuse not to feel good.” 

--Esther Hicks, from "Ask the Coach" on Facebook 

"Amen, sister!" And a huge "I'm sorry," to all those in my past who I have made responsible for my happiness. 

Maybe it was reading this quote last week that allowed me to make a different choice when we arrived at our friend's cabin last weekend for a couple of days at the beach. 

It was around 8:00 at night and the sun was starting to set. We had bags of clothes, bedding and a cooler full of food to put away. I started to work on getting settled in when my husband said to the kids, "Let's head to the beach!" 

My heart immediately sank, I was going to miss the romp on the beach because I had to put all of this STUFF away. Pout. Then something clicked and I realized, I didn't HAVE to do anything. 

The clothes and bedding could wait, the food was on ice....I COULD go to the beach. 

So I went. And in so doing, let my husband and my sons off the hook for my happiness, which worked out better for all of us. 

Try it this weekend and let me know how it goes!

FREEDOM!

"...[A]s we offer freedom, it is given us." 

--A Course in Miracles, Lesson 332

May you offer - and receive - the gift of FREEDOM today!

Total Freedom

"The only relationship that can make both [people] happy is one in which sentimentality has no place and neither [person] makes any claim on the life and freedom of the other. " 

--Milan Kundera

I had a bit of a shock today. When I went to tell my kids it was time to get their shoes on to go to school, my older son was nowhere to be found. 

Not in the house. Not in the yard. Not down the street. Gone.

His backpack and shoes were gone as well so I had a pretty good idea where he was, but still it gave me pause. 

In the past week or so my older son has begun to want to walk to school on his own. He doesn't want to wait for me or our "walking bus" to be ready to go. He wants to leave on his own time and walk by himself.

A couple of years ago this would have freaked me out, but he has matured a lot and so have I. I have also read, "Free-Range Kids, How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without Going Nuts with Worry) by Lenore Skenazy so I know that a lot of my fears are unfounded. Still. 

I have the somewhat irrational fear that if my kids are out of my sight they are not safe. On one level, I know this is not true, but on another level I am not so sure. 

When I called my husband to tell him about the incident (after I drove to school to confirm that, yes, he had made it there and gave him "the talk" about letting me know when he was leaving the house), he was very sympathetic....with my son. 

He has always thought that I am too cautious, too worried, too.....safe. That the boys need more room, more independence, more FREEDOM than I give them. 

We talked about it a little bit and I found myself getting really upset. Feeling like men (and boys) don't care about women, about our needs for communication and checking in, that they just want to go off and leave us in the dust, hunt some elk and come home when they damn well please. 

My husband confirmed that this was pretty much so. BUT, he said, the important part is that they DO come home and that they WANT to. 

So I have been thinking about freedom today. What it means, how much I want, how much I can give to the men in my household. 

The idea of everyone coming and going without any communication is frightening to me. It's anarchy and that just doesn't feel like a family to me. But perhaps we are in need of some adjusting of expectations. 

For the past nine years I have done everything for my kids. Made their meals, changed their diapers, washed their clothes, picked up after them. I have been feeling lately like they need to take more responsibility for their things and their bodies and their lives, so it only make sense that as I ask more of them, they ask me for more too. More freedom. Of movement, of control, of decision-making. 

It's an intricate dance we are all doing together, this dance of freedom. Always trying to decide what is too much, what is too little and what is just enough.

I have to admit I do like the feeling of TOTAL FREEDOM. I got a taste of that when I was in Paris a few weeks ago. Just being able to go and do completely on my own time was something I had not experienced in a long time. It felt great and I want that for my kids and for my husband and for my family. BUT...

There is such a strong pull towards being in control, being in charge, being "the one" who is doing it all, holding this whole thing together, that it is hard to let go and just let everyone be. Be themselves. Be who they are. Be in each moment with total freedom.

For the past nine years that has not been possible. For me. For them. For us. But now freedom is looming and I am not quite sure how I feel about it.  

EVERY SINGLE DAY

"The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day." 

--David Foster Wallace from my Free Will Astrology horoscope for the week of 4/19/11

If this isn't a definition of motherhood, I don't know what is. 

I read this quote in my horoscope a couple of weeks ago and thought: all the meditation, all the practice, all the work I need to do is built into my life EVERY SINGLE DAY. If I don't do another thing, but do this with intention that would be enough. 

Sometimes I see it and sometimes I don't, but I believe this quote is a reminder - to all of us - to take the raw material of our own lives and turn it into a spiritual practice. A practice in becoming more aware, more awake, more alive, in every moment. A practice in showing more kindness, more love, and more compassion, EVERY SINGLE DAY. 

Let's start now. Go!

True Freedom

"The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day." 

--David Foster Wallace, from Rob Brezsny's Free Will Astrology newsletter

Woah! Is this a definition of parenting or what?

This is not the post I was preparing for today. The post I was preparing for today is one I have been writing and wrestling with for over a year. I just can't seem to get it right. 

But while sitting on my couch, surfing to avoid the inevitable working on this piece that just won't come together, I found this quote and it sang for me. 

At the same time I was being serenaded by my cat, mewling outside his cat door waiting to be let in.

I have had this cat since I was 24 years old, which makes him ANCIENT for a feline. He has lost most of his teeth, his fur is matted in places and he is a bit forgetful and VERY picky about what he eats. 

I spend a good part of every day letting him in and putting him out. Putting down food for him, which he rejects so I add a little water to it. He licks at it a bit and then looks up at me as if to say, "That's it?" So I add more water or open another can or rummage around in the fridge to see what "real food" I can find for him to try. 

Then he ambles into the bathroom for some water (he likes to drink out of the bathtub tap). He mewls furiously until I come into the bathroom and turn on the tap for him, which I do. He takes a couple of licks and then mewls again, looking up at me as if to say, "That's it?"

The thing is, half the time I have NO IDEA what he wants. Does he want warmer water? Colder water? A more powerful stream of water? Water in a bowl instead (which he has, of course, but never seems to touch)? 

I feel like I have tried all of the above and more, but he just never seems to be satisfied and his timing couldn't be worse. 

First thing in the morning, in the middle of the night, while I am furiously writing before the kids get up, as soon as we get home from wherever we have been and I have a million things to put away and dinner to make and kids to attend to....whenever I really don't have the time for him, there he is, mewling away for some unfathomable something that he wants or needs. 

It reminds me so clearly of what it was like to have a baby in the house that I almost have flashbacks. 

This is exactly the way I felt when parenting my first baby. Useless. Confused. Frustrated. Bothered. I had no idea what he really wanted and how to satisfy him so I did my best in between periods of "trying to get stuff done" to meet his endless needs, but there was no way to know for sure what he really wanted and how to give it to him so I spent a lot of my time feeling useless and frustrated. 

Even back then I had a feeling that true freedom did not mean doing exactly what you want to do in each moment, but rather choosing freely to do what needs to be done in each moment. This quote feels like confirmation from The Universe and encouragement to keep going, to keep working at it until that freedom comes.

Redefining Selfishness

"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live; it is asking others to live as one wishes to live." 

--Oscar Wilde, who died in Paris

I know NOTHING

  

"We have to recognize the various tribes we belong to and begin extricating ourselves from the unexamined assumptions each of them mistakes for THE TRUTH." 

--From the book Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha

This is a quote from my new favorite book - and I am only 31 pages into it....

This book is such genius it's all I can do to go to sleep at night and get my kids to school in the morning. All I want to do is sit and read it cover to cover. 

It's all about how we basically have it all wrong about sex and love and monogamy and pretty much everything in between and for some reason I am really digging being told that everything I think is wrong. 

I think part of it has to do with the movie I saw last night. 

"Blue Valentine" is a quiet out-of-love story about a young couple who meet, fall madly in love and get married in a complete cloud of hope and optimism that few of us are fortunate enough to experience in our lives. 

Fast forward five or six years, however, and the wheels are coming completely off this bus. 

The thing I love about this movie is that nothing "happened" to make this happen, except LIFE. 

No one cheated, no one hit anyone, no one committed a heinous or illegal act. The couple has just grown weary of each other and of their lives. Who hasn't felt that way about their life or a relationship at some point in time?

The movie ends on an ambiguous note and you do not know what is going to happen with this couple as the credits roll in bursts of fireworks interspersed with their happier moments. 

I left the theater feeling sad and hopeless, but in the best possible way. 

It was as if someone had turned the world inside out and shown me that I know nothing. That we all know nothing. That none of us knows anything. At that moment, I found this strangely comforting. 

Watching this young couple fall in love through the flashbacks I would have bet money on them to go the distance, but I would have been wrong (or at least partly wrong). 

You just never know what is going to happen to you or anyone else and there is something so liberating about knowing that you just don't know. It frees you from having to know and that feels like true freedom to me. 

It's almost as good as being told that everything I thought I knew about sex is wrong....

"Don't give others what they don't want."

Japanese Proverb

When in an emotional experience, learn to RESPOND not REACT.

Alan Downs, PhD from his book The Half-Empty Heart: A Supportive Guide to Breaking Free from Chronic Discontent

"The best thing I can give to others is to liberate myself from the common delusions and be, for myself and for others, free."

Thomas Merton, from Dr. Cat's Helping Handbook: A Compassionate Guide for Being Human

"Freedom is a state of mind. "

Krishnamurti

"Once enslaved, few want to burst our from under the leaking roof of the slave hut to freedom and stumble in the cold dark night alone. In the back part of our hearts, we equate freedom with terror. To be free leaves us isolated from the other slaves. Better that we rage until we are palsied, point and squall and wail at fate, shake our fists at God, blame the politicians, blame anybody, everything, because to become free demands that we take responsibility for our bondage. No, we do not want freedom. We were born in slavery. It is too frightening outside the slave hut. We want, instead, a more comfortable slavery, gilded with bountiful excuses for our servitude."

Gerry Spence from his book Seven Simple Steps to Personal Freedom: An Owner's Manual for Life

"Condemn and you are made a prisoner. Forgive and you are free."

A Course in Miracles, Lesson 198

"Be impeccable with your word; Don't take anything personally; Don't make assumptions; Always do your best."

Don Miguel Ruiz from The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom

"If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun."

Katharine Hepburn

"The bestowal of freedom is the bestowal of LOVE and only LOVE can save the world. "

A.S. Neill author of Summerhill:A Radical Approach to Child Rearing

"Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you. "

John Paul Sartre, from Dr. Cat's Helping Handbook