Reaching For Freedom

In the depth of our hearts there lies a place where we can live and find the freedom in that fullest space. It is a space of liberating expressiveness that brings out the fears and questions that plague one's mind with doubt. As a way to take flight, there must be the willingness to abandon that which others expect us to be and do. To live from our lives, we stand up in our experience and step into that place of unrelenting opportunity.

These places allow an intimate connection with life in the most powerful of ways. We evoke the essence of our beings as we honor our own paths with honesty and are changed when we experience the intersection of these places of love, discovery, understanding, openness, and transformation. The challenge within comes from wrestling with the forces that try to make our dynamic lives for us. No one can tell us what to experience when we love. We can only change when we are ready.

So as we venture into life, we find these experiences that free our inhibitions and allow for something almost divine to emerge. What does it take to fully liberate a soul for a moment alone if not a life time as well? To be free from the chains of life? When these freedoms are kept in bondage by discrimination, oppression, trauma, misunderstanding, and fear, a full life cannot be lived. Perhaps a lifetime of moments of walking through the gentle moments of sunshine and bitter winds, amidst the shade of a tree that grew alongside the roads that brought us new and old memories together, and among the breaths that we felt our freedom as a means to overcome our collective fears and struggles.

To be free, we have to reach into ourselves and extend into the heights of our dreams and goals, affirm the shadows standing beside us and grow tall together. To be free, we still will live with consequences and the experience of pain, but it is different when the pain is understood as it is overcome with love and compassion, each day, each life at a time.

Catching A Meteor Though It Falls

As the days pass, the years somehow do, as well. I began writing this blog in part to remember that the presence of each moment in our lives can have the potential to help life become something beautiful and real. This experience can happen anywhere with anything, and is often unplanned and surprising, but also lasting and memorable. Then time doesn't have to go so fast, it can go at the pace of the moment as we live and breathe and take it all in and be alive in its memory after these times have long ended and are returned to in photographs and reminiscences. 

Have you ever waited for something for only minutes or seconds? The time seemed to go slower than when you were living every moment as we looked forward to the rush of life continuing and building with fun and excitement. What about the seconds that you feel something wonderful come over your senses? The moment that we feel that contentment or that understanding that even the imperfection of life somehow settles with the laughter and peace is the time when our life comes together and eases our heart.

Holidays do this for many of us. They serve as reminders while the traditions we carry out on these special days give significance to our lives and memory. The rhythms of daily living can be monotonous and routine without much wonder and excitement. As mundane as things can be, stunning surprises can occur if we are paying attention in the present. A meteor falling only lasts an instant, a beginning of something happens only once, and even as life moments seem to occur in patterns, every day can have a flash of memory and wonder.

At a recital I attended recently, a violin and cello duo reached and soared into the colorful art in the windows and walls illustrating a portrait of the past to present listeners that were able to feel the movement of emotion and life expressed in music. The different sounds harmonized like textures of a landscape bringing me to distant lands and triggered feelings I had never felt. Such an experience would be temporary even though it would always be with me in memory. It also becomes lasting as the quilt of moments grows and colors the soul.    

Free

Though we in the United States often talk about freedom, we don't often talk about feeling free because quite honestly, we are usually bound by the fetters of insecurity, regret, and worry. All these things make it impossible to be truly free, and similarly, make it impossible to feel free to be yourself; the person you are and no one else. Yet, when we let go, being free can release us of those persistent pieces of our thoughts that edge out the moment where we can create our present which gives us permission to shape our future.

Moments of freedom come from this release, and can also be available in activities where we must focus on ourselves and our surroundings or find ourselves missing the way forward. In contra dancing, each move is part of a sequence, both alone and with a partner and other pairs of partners that are part of a certain timing. Although there is often time to catch up if something is missed, it still alters the flow slightly. As such, flow allows for moments of freedom within contra dancing. Even the music allows us to breathe and move in to community with ourselves and others sharing the set with you.  Recently when I was dancing, there was a moment between the neighbor whom I balanced and swung with where the rhythm, movement, and connection provided an interpersonal oneness that was not necessarily spiritual, but understanding and knowing. With worry and doubt, this couldn't have been experienced, but in the present, we can take what we bring to each interaction and allow it to shape both our reality and thoughts towards what was and what is so that the past doesn't always have to be a trap on our present.

These minutes of dancing can be short or long, and they can release me into a freedom of joy and deep contentment that leaves me accepting the future and the past as beautiful parts that are shared in the present. By sensing the beauty of life in its freedom that you must give yourself permission to experience, the way through to the future is unlocked by release and embrace.

Contra Dance at Cornell University - Ithaca, New York