My Elusive Feeling of Freedom

Last updated on: June 10, 2009 at 6:01 pm by David Hayward

My Elusive Feeling of Freedom 2009-06-10T18:01:33-04:00 David Hayward

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I’ve been feeling really down, hopeless and somewhat depressed lately. I don’t like it. Lisa decided, with my 100% support, that she would quit work and go to University to get her nursing degree. Less income more expense. I told her that I would stop struggling with my vocation and just be content with it. My constant struggle with my calling, if it actually is a calling, can cause us lots of anxiety, especially now that we need reliable income.

But me being me, the struggle emerged again and she knew it. Finally, yesterday morning, we had a serious talk. She said, “The trap is only in your mind!” I thought all day about what she said, and I realized that she is right! I suddenly knew, again, that what gets me really hopeless is when I feel trapped. Exteriorly, I don’t look trapped. And I’m not. I’m very free to do what I want. So what is it that makes me begin to question my vocation so deeply and disturbingly? If I’m not really trapped, maybe I feel trapped in other ways. And if I do feel trapped in other ways, why do I allow this to happen? Why, if I don’t have to be trapped, do I allow myself to be and feel trapped?

When I was asking myself these questions yesterday it began to dawn on me that I feel trapped when I feel pressure to conform, constrain and control myself. I began to notice areas I felt some pressure to conform: sometimes I feel an unspoken pressure from the institution and individuals within it to adhere to a preset systemization of belief and morality; sometimes I allow a comment left on my blog or criticism from other bloggers to intimidate me into conformity; sometimes I feel afraid to let what I really believe to leak out of my mouth; sometimes I allow criticism of the way I oversee our community, or criticism of our community itself, to frighten me into silence, passivity and paralysis.

I want to live free. I want to believe what I believe, oversee the way I oversee, write the way I write, paint the way I paint, and live the way I live. When I allow others to cause me to shrink back, that’s when I become sad, hopeless and immobilized. As soon as I realized that, I immediately was free again. ‘Til next time.

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