I’m free

“Why is it,” Jonathan puzzled, “that the hardest thing in the world is to convince a bird that he is free, and that he can prove it for himself if he’d just spend a little time practicing? Why should that be so hard?”

–From by Richard Bach’s  Jonathan Livingston Seagull

My vacation started yesterday and as I walked out through the office door, I felt that glorious lightness of being that goes something like this . . .  for three whole weeks, I’m free and it’s the little-kid-throwing-her-bookbag-up-in-the-air-first-day-of-summer-vacation kind of free that means for the tiniest slip of time, I am the master of my own little world.  I will dig my toes into the red sand and inhale the drug that is fresh ocean air. I will indulge in icecream, potato chips and lazy afternoons of reading novels that do nothing but entertain.  I. am. free.

I admit that this vacation freedom is a bit of a giddy illusion. I am free no matter what I’m doing. I am free to make choices and obviously I have chosen this version of life. As far as I see it, it was a pretty good decision. I love well and I am loved.  On a good day I can admit that everything else is icing on my cake.

So why the crazy urge to dance around the office with my handbag my head singing Alice Cooper’s School’s Out?

Maybe like that disillusioned seagull, Jonathan, in Richard Bach’s fable, every once in a while I need to practice feeling free to remember that I am.

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