Eleutheromania

We all want it in some way, shape or form.  Many of us are fortunate enough to be born into it.  Some of us will argue incessantly that we’re entitled to it.  Others wake up to discover a yearning for it living, latent, inside. Me, I feel it in a restlessness that I’ve learned is telling me I’m not yet where I need to be, what I’m seeking is out there; I should be willing to move on, trusting I’ll find it.  While it manifests itself differently in each of us, its tug is impossible to deny.

Freedom, bestowed upon us is a gift.  We appreciate this when we look around the globe at the injustice and oppression in many places in our world.  Those who work jobs where new ideas and ways of getting it done are welcomed and encouraged understand this, as do those of us who’ve found our way out of suffocating, unfulfilling relationships. It’s what we want desperately for our teenagers to appreciate as well, as they wrestle out of our clutches anxious and impatient to own their life stories.

 

Not only is freedom itself a gift, but so is the intense and irresistible desire of wanting its absence creates.  Like pain, the minute we feel tethered, we know something is not right:  I’m not where I need to be. Maybe I’ve veered off my path?

 

A wish to be free means it’s time to look at the big picture again, to decide if where you are today will get you to where you want to be tomorrow.

Sometimes it’s enough to do an evaluation.  Many times over the course of my career I’ve been advised to look outside when frustrations in my current role besieged me.  Just looking at other options is often enough to suss, affirming where I am today is the right place.  Turbidity quells, the bight loosens.

I’ve been a free spirit my entire life, before I even knew it myself.  It was in my choice of the big, public high school over the small parochial my siblings attended, in my determination to move out on my own with an annual salary of $14,000 in 1987, in the way I leapt at the chance to live in California in my twenties.  

While responsibility for others colors the risk-taking in my world today, friends still immediately see the gypsy in me; some are convinced I should be dating a hippie.  Knowing that this is who I am helps me to work with my own restlessness, listening intently to what it’s trying to tell me instead of agonizing over why it’s there.  It helps me understand my oldest, as well.  He’s a nomad, too.  And so now I’m teaching him how to manage, not suppress his inner gypsy.

Just the other night, in my “bohemian go-go” costume at a 70’s party held at a friend’s impeccably well-preserved 70’s home, I’m intrigued by the enormous bell tower on his balcony.  Five huge, white bells suspended high in the sky with thick ropes begging to be tugged.  It’s 10PM, yet when another beckons me to hang on the ropes with him, clanging those bells with abandon, I can’t say no.  Janis Joplin’s hippie ballad rings true:  “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

Follow your calling where it takes you, in the moment and for the long haul.  Learn from the experiences your freedom affords you. Nurture wanderlust in those you love because you know how cherished it is in your own soul.