Tag Archives: choices

Freedom on the Fourth

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Statue of liberty
As we approach the 4th of July, American Independence Day, I have been thinking of what it means to be free. Freedom, of course, has different meanings to different people. There is freedom on the level of nations and the rule of law- a freedom fundamentally concerned with rights, but there is also freedom on a more personal level.

What does it mean to be personally free? Is freedom about the absence of constraints? Are we free only when no others have a claim on our lives, our allegiances, our affections? Yes- certainly that is a type of freedom and one perhaps that we wish for when we are feeling overwhelmed and pulled at from all directions.

But I think for most of us, that type of freedom would quickly grow tiresome. If freedom is only about being free of constraints, we will find ourselves isolated and alone. However, freedom can also be about the opportunity and the room to grow into the best versions of ourselves- to fulfill our unique potential and purpose[1]. And often this means being in connection with others and connection can mean constraints.

As a wife, mother, friend, daughter, sister,  coach and teacher, there are many constraints placed upon me. I am not free to pick up and travel to exotic locales on a whim as no one would be there to pick my kids up after jujitsu or tuck them into bed at night. Nor am I free of financial or emotional obligations or those associated with my work. But if I define freedom so narrowly I will never be free.

For me, freedom is in the broader choices I have made and the way in which I choose to live my life. I have entered into these obligations freely and happily. I have bound my life to others in service of something greater- a higher calling than just my individual desires at a given moment. I have freely chosen to participate in the world in a certain way and it has led to an expansiveness of spirit and a great deal of joy.

My freedom is my own and deeply fulfilling for me. For others, the choices I have made may seem confining (or perhaps not confining enough!) but personal freedom means the ability to pursue your own path- making the choices that are right for you.

To be sure- there times when we make choices that do not feel like our own- they are the ones we make trying to please others that also require us to sacrifice some essential part of ourselves. Indeed, one of the regrets that people most often have at death is that they did not follow their own dreams- that they did not pursue the opportunity to become the best versions of themselves.

Thus freedom is a balancing act (and what in life isn’t?). But the first step to achieving this balance is to imagine what the best versions of ourselves look and feel like and then pursue opportunities to become that. Make no mistake- personal freedom is not always easy to achieve, but it is always worth the effort.

So on this 4th of July while you celebrate and honor the ways in which you are free, take a moment to declare your personal independence and honor your path to personal freedom.

 

[1] Isaiah Berlin discussed this in his influential essay “Two Concepts of Liberty” in which he defined the two types of freedom as positive and negative liberty. Berlin was writing about political philosophy and was concerned about the excesses of positive liberty as applied at a state level. But my remarks here are more confined to the personal level- leaving macro analysis for another time and place.

 

The Storms of Life

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As another winter storm bears down on New England, I engage in my pre-storm ritual: obsessively reading weather reports and blogs.  I love weather.  I love storm watching. I feel (despite much evidence to the contrary) that if I read everything I will know what the future holds. I will be able to predict what will happen and where. I will be prepared.

Of course, I am not. Meteorology may be a science but it is clearly not an exact one. Every storm teaches me that the future is unknowable, and therefore uncontrollable. My constant reading aside, the weather will do what it plans to do. Rain/snow lines will shift, low pressure systems will unexpectedly move in and my day will be affected in ways I hadn’t planned.

In short, the weather is just another area of my life over which I have very little control. The career I planned in my twenties is very different than the one I have now. The marriage I imagined as a child bears little resemblance to the one in which I happily find myself. The beautiful children I have today are very different than the ones I daydreamed about as I held my hand over my swollen belly all those years ago. What happened? Life.

All the preparation in the world, all the good advice, all the self-help and parenting books, could not prepare me for the ways that life intervened. I could not have predicted the ways that love, economics, ambition, violence and illness would affect the trajectory of my life.  All the reading and planning could not have prepared me for the ways in which life would alter and change me- shifting priorities, values and beliefs.

Control is an illusion.What mattered more along the way was knowing myself and being open to learning more.When life challenged me, my willingness to adjust, go with the flow and when needed, set limits, allowed me to grow as a person- to not only survive, but thrive.

We focus a lot in our society on being prepared. And preparation is important. Too often though, we focus on the wrong kind of preparation. We prepare for life’s storms never realizing that forecasts change and that the storm we prepared for is seldom the storm that arrives. We cling to dogma and ideas about the way things should be instead of looking within to build strength to find our own truths.

What I have learned is that flexibility and humility are my lifelines; knowing what I can and cannot control and learning to ask for help when I am tossed in the waves of life’s hurricanes.

I suppose that I like to watch storms because it provides me with an illusion of control. But I know now it is an illusion. I know that I can no more control the storms of my life than the storms in the Gulf Stream. But with the weather I can pretend. So, today I’ll buy the loaf of bread and the gallon of milk and enjoy watching the storm, if and when it hits.