In the absence of any sort of containment or confinement, do we seek to be "Free"? No. Then, there is only the immediate, the Now. Living in which we might call "being free." It is as we grow and "learn," that we become chained. Chained by our parents first, their beliefs, their fears, their failures. Then by the school system, and by our peers, and by social expectation, by worries implanted into us by TV and by the culture around us. We become prisoners of the fear of Other, the fear of aging, the fear of economic insecurity, the fears our politicans offer us, the fears that the corporate nation demands of us, the "knowledge" that we aren't enough, that the markers in our path will make us enough, that meeting the wants of others will make us enough, that these goals society poses will make us enough, finally. We become so caged and so enamored of the myriad mirage goals and inflexible security of our cages that often we dry-hump them with fervor, we nudge our deepache creases with the iron-hard corners of our own boundaries, imagining the eventual dull aggravated thrill that wracks our nerve-dead spine to be enough. Our adult lives, taking on the shapes in our sitcoms, too often become routines of habit, chain-reaction action that numbs the mind, mildly satisfying arrangements crammed end-to-end without room for thought and peppered with pseudo-joys and para-freedoms and the rare, unbidden and almost painful moments of lucidity.

Without effort to the contrary, we are doomed to a vague and pointless existence caused mostly by all we have learned in an attempt to get free of the helplessness and ignorance of our youth.

Without energy expended to keep feeling for a loose bar, dropped keys, or hidden way around those cages that close over us, we are slaves to the traps we have built for our own kind and ourselves.

But at first? As a child? There is no imperative but to be. And, then, to do. To learn. To feel. To make. To find.

Too many lessons come in the form of stops. Not as keys to another door, not as raw material we can burnish to our own liking. No, too many lessons come to us in the form of limits. The early lessons of our sex identities are like this—"you can't wear that color, you can't play with that doll, you cannot cry, you cannot feel"—as are so many lessons about society. I could go on and on, as could you.

When I hear parents passing down what is their own ignorance or limits, it makes me wince. It's okay to say "I don't know," and some know how. But if it were only that simple. Why is it always that those points on which we are so unsure, or those times we know so little that we make so sure to wrap our words with such steel certainty? Being one who has done this throughout my life at various times, I guess I should know! We do it to ward off our own fears. We do it so we don't have to think too much about it. The sound of someone not-convincing themselves. We are afraid of what we do not know, of what will swoop in if we leave a blank, we are afraid of what we have spent our time ignoring.

By giving children lines designed to stand in for understanding, arranged to justify or overlook these pockets of not-knowing, parents pass down their own fears as well as their own defenses of them as well as the inability to see them or the entire process unfolding. All with a line or two. And because the lesson is taught so indirectly but persistently, it is hard to find it and root it out. As with so many lessons that corral us in ways unneeded.

When the world became violent for me, somewhere around six, it was in the hydra-headed form of diverted attention, compromised obligations, peer antagonism, and parental abuse. These are non-emotional ways of describing this phase of my life, of course. My point is that before being free became an imperative—free of physical violence, physical intimidation, free of hurtful treatment at the hands of those more powerful than myself, free of the mind-prison of SCHOOL—I wanted nothing. I simply lived. Wandered throughout the early 70s with wide open eyes (and very long hair!)

But soon, as I said, I met the world in a different way. And I had to learn to deal with it. And I did. My task was to be free of those agents of hurt and harm, and I did. I got free. And many changes were made, and many hard bargains struck, losses suffered and sacrifices made. But I moved myself beyond those agents. They could no longer hurt or harm me.

And then the very tools I had used to get free became my captors, too. But of course that awareness never comes right away. I did not know this for a time, and trusted in my new steadfast means. As Goethe said, None are so hopelessly enslaved, as those who falsely believe they are free..

This is the danger. We do it over and over. Por ejemplo, we use the ways of thinking we have been given or shown even when trying to find a new way of thinking. We do, I do. But I'm learning to look for it now. I've learned to not hold the new tool too tightly, for it is sure to leave marks like the others. I am learning to feel my hand, as it is empty, as it is full.

We have been taught to lean in and bear down and be strong and work hard to engage and fight and not give up and perservere and these are good things to know, but have we been taught to give up and listen? To stand quiet and feel? To slow down and become sensitive? To open ourselves to our intuition? To let time unfold itself? To hollow out our ego and fill up on understanding? To take a walk and let the earth narrate the journey entirely, so that we come home with stories? To unburden our own hearts by releasing expectations? To prepare for joy?

These are ways in which new thinking happens, ways in which even our thoughts fall apart so we can find the paths out of our own cages, the ways in which we remember we are free. It is this remembering I look for at times. Perhaps it is my imperative when it needs to be. Other times I simply am there. And want to enjoy my moment. Other times others interrupt and I want to be free of their interference. And then sometimes I will know that wanting to be free of their interference is an immediate prison and I must remember to move with the flow. My wants are not the flow. And it is important to remember, too, that I am always ready with a new cage. I am chosen to close the door, chosen as a jailor for my proximity—I am the insider. The one who reminds me that I am free.

Take the meme on if you would like to.