Dreams of Freedom

 This week's quote reads, "Tame birds dream of freedom, wild birds fly."

Which I think has a certain amount of truth in it, but also ignores the fact that sometimes, being behind bars (as symbolised by the tame birds) is not always (or even, perhaps, often) a matter of choice or custom, but a matter of unforgiving and unrelenting circumstance, outside our control.

There are two types of freedom: Freedom From and Freedom To. So, freedom from constraints, oppression, pain, for example. Freedom to believe and do what we like. Neither of which are available to us, all (or even much) of the time. 

How many of us can say, hand on heart, that we are truly free? I would guess that the lives of most of us are constrained in some way, at least some of the time - by not being allowed / able to do what we want to (constraints); by being picked on (or worse) by others because we do not fit in with some mythical "norm" (oppression); by our bodies letting us down or wearing out (pain). All these things limit our freedom.

And even fewer of us are free to do what we like, and not do what we don't like. There may be laws against it, or society frowns on it, or we have to spend a large proportion of our time doing things we need to do (like earning enough money to cover our costs of living or caring for our loved ones), or we simply do not have the time and energy to do it (whatever it is). To give one example, over the last few weeks, while I was poorly, I was signed off work and so in theory was free to do whatever I liked. But because I was ill, I was constrained by the limits of what my body could do.

Perhaps the only true freedom is that which resides inside our heads. We are free to choose what we believe about our lives, about God, about other people; and free to choose how we respond to those aforementioned unforgiving and unrelenting circumstances. Which may make all the difference to our happiness - I love the Serenity Prayer, by the Protestant theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, the first part of which reads:

"God grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change;

courage to change the things I can;

and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;

enjoying one moment at a time;

accepting hardships as the pathway to peace."

If we can attain (and then hold onto) that mindset, we will be truly free, in all the ways that matter.

Why Worrying Doesn't Help

I am not generally a worrier, having been blessed by having been born without the "worry gene", which I've blogged about before. Nevertheless, it does get to me sometimes... I am due to have an operation on my left foot in early December to correct some deformity in my toes, which has been caused by arthritis. And I catch myself worrying about it every day. What if it goes wrong? What if the anaesthetic wears off befoe they've finished (to my horror, it's being done under a local anaesthetic rather than a general one. And yes, I understand that it will be better for me not to be knocked out, but urgh...) What if it doesn't make a good difference? What if I'm left off worse than before? What if I can't do things I can do now - like hill climbing etc? In short, a whole platoon of "what ifs" is haunting my mind, making me fretful. And I don't like it, not one little bit.

So it was good to read the wise advice of the Greek Stoic philosopher, Epictetus: "There is only one way to happiness, and that is to stop worrying about things that are beyond our control." [And I've just had a small moment of joy when I looked him up on Wikipedia: he was born in Hierapolis, Phrygia, which is now known at Pamukkale in Western Turkey. There is a World Heritage site there, an area of glorious travertine terraces which also features hot springs) and my husband and I visited them in 2013. They were astonishingly beautiful see below].

(image: Wikimedia Commons)

So, thanks to the nudge from Epictetus, I am going to try to stop worrying. It is making me miserable and will make no difference whatsoever to the outcome of the operation. 

In fact, there are very few outside events that are within our control as human beings. I believe that the only thing we are able to control is our reaction to our worries... we can allow them to take us over, removing all the joy from our lives, or we can choose to tell ourselves, "Nope, can't do anything about that. But I can let it go. I can choose to not let it get to me. I can choose to bring myself back to the present moment, the present pain, the present pleasure, and not lose myself in dark imaginings."

I appreciate that this is difficult advice for us to take, and may well be impossible for those who suffer from real anxiety, who may find it both irritating and laughable. If this is you, my reader, I apologise.

But I don't. So I'm going to try...

Life is Enough

Danish author Hans Christian Andersen once wrote, "'Life alone is not enough,' said the butterfly. 'You must also have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.'"

And I agree with him to a certain extent. The things and experiences we love - sunshine, freedom, a little flower in the butterfly's case - can make all the difference between enjoying our lives and merely existing, dragging ourselves from one day to the next without any moments of transcendence and joy.

Life is a mystery - we have no control over when and how we enter it, nor how or when we will leave it. And, to be honest, we don't actually have that much control over the time in between. All of us grow older, and closer to our final day in this life,  at a rate of 60 minutes an hour, 24 hours a day, and 365 days a year. I was only saying yesterday, "I can't believe it's June already." Because the first five months of the year seem to have simply flown past.

But I recognise that this is a subjective view and that for some people, these last five months will have dragged, seeming to last for an eternity. In fact, all our views are subjective, precisely because each of us inhabits a unique body, each of us perceives the present in a unique way, depending on our past experiences, and our physical, mental and spiritual health. 

I believe that each of us can choose how we respond to the things which happen to us, which can make all the difference. So many things are outside our control (or at least, partly so) - our health, how other people interact with us, the body and mind and spirit we were born with...  There is a fabulous blogpost about this by Lori Deschene, on the Tiny Buddha blog, here. To summarise what she says: we cannot control other people and how they interact with us; the past, the future, outcomes of what we do, how we age, our overall health, that we will get hurt, and the suffering in the world. 

But we CAN control how we respond to all these - which is also explained in the blogpost. It can be quite difficult to choose not to engage negatively with negative experiences, but if we can manage to step back and not allow ourselves to react emotionally, our lives could be much happier. It's a matter of learning to let go of what we can't control and of appreciating the good experiences. Easy to write, difficult to do! But so worth the attempt.

 

Control versus Faith

For the first time, I disagree root and branch with Baltasar Gracian y Morales, the author of this week's quotation. He writes, "The only time we can really control is the future. We can shape it according to our wishes."

Um, no, we cannot. Brené Brown explains this beautifully in her Sounds True course The Power of Vulnerability, when she says, "How many of you love someone? Hands across the room. How many of you can be sure that person loves you back? That they will love you tomorrow?" (I'm paraphrasing from memory).

The fact is, we have NO control over the future. None. The only time we can really control is the instant of the present, when we can choose to respond to whatever is in front of us in this way or that way. And even then, we can get hijacked by our emotions, and respond in a way we didn't want to, didn't plan to.

We may, perhaps, influence the future, by our actions and words in the present. We may have faith that something is going to turn out one way or another, and may work towards that goal. But because we live in the infinite complexities of the real world, full of other people and a myriad of events, we cannot control the future.

To give a mundane example, I have organised many conferences and courses - booked the speakers and the venue, publicised the event as best I can, done all the paperwork to ensure that the day runs smoothly. BUT when the day comes, I cannot control how the speaker(s) and the participants will interact, nor what the participants will learn or gain from their attendance. I have to take that on faith.

Perhaps faith is about letting go of the need for certainty, and going forward joyously into the unknown, keeping ourselves open to respond to whatever happens.