FREEDOM MONTH: DAY 3: “I felt the taste of mortality in my mouth, and at that moment I understood that I was not going to live forever. It takes a long time to learn that, but when you finally do, everything changes inside you, you can never be the same again. I was seventeen years old, and all of a sudden, without the slightest flicker of a doubt, I understood that my life was my own, that it belonged to me and no one else.
I’m talking about freedom. A sense of despair that becomes so great, so crushing, so catastrophic, that you have no choice but to be liberated by it. That’s the only choice, or else you crawl into a corner and die.” ― Paul Auster
This, I believe, is one of the most freeing quotes I have ever read. Why? Because I watch people spend their entire lives comparing and contrasting themselves with others in an effort to find their spot. That is not the way to freedom.
The most brutal systems in the world seek to make us unify. In religion, in politics, in military might, in all systems that destroy the human spirit, the effort is to make us all the same. We cannot be forced to live in those molds…it kills us emotionally and spiritually.
We see this in our school systems, we see it in the military, we see it in the prisons and in governments where we are required to conform to some kind of “normal” that does not exist. None of us is going to fit that description or into that cubicle.
For centuries, individuals have fought this classification and been outcast or termed crazy. That is not the case.
What this quote gives me is the idea that because we will all be born on a certain day and live lives that are unique and different, we need to also embrace the notion of our dying time. In doing so, we begin to truly live. And THAT, my dear friends, is the full embodiment of freedom.
When we own our shit and clean up our own messes, we can walk away from the social and internal structures that lock us into cages and create our need to conform. We do not need to ever be anyone other than who we came here to be. I may relate to your feelings and some of your ideas, but I am going to walk MY path, not yours. And, if I am doing that truly, I don’t have time to tell you how to walk yours. I am too busy with my own.
That is freedom. I am free of you and you and you. I don’t care what you think. Truly, I hope you like me, but I will not be anyone else to make you happy. That dance just pissed me off for far too many of my years. I am here to be the biggest and best Kelly I know. And that is all I can be today. Like it or not, if you stand in my way, I will knock you down. I would rather love the you that you are being, but if you are too busy trying to run my show, we will not be getting along.
And that is freedom. It is none of my business what you think of me. Get on with your life and be a happy person. That is all we can wish for each other that truly carries the spirit of the Creator who gave us this amazing life. It is far too short to hang onto the crap that I had when I got to this recovery thing. Now I am FREE and I love it so much!
Dolphin Hug 