I often wonder if I’ll ever get tired of listening to good music with the windows down on a warm day. I wonder if that feeling will ever not feel like letting out a breath you’ve been holding for too long. I wonder if that feeling of going away and doing your own thing and being free will ever not be appealing.
The moment I wrote the word free I realised I will probably always love the feeling. Because no matter how old you are or what you’ve experienced, freedom will always be something that resonates with you, right?
I wonder what music I’ll be listening to when I’m thirty, or what I’ll class as “old” music. I wonder what length my hair will be, and whether it’ll be too painful to have the windows rolled down all the way. I wonder if ‘freedom’ will involve me driving off by myself with my own music or sitting with a car full of kids going on holiday. (Hopefully not full full of kids. I don’t want to be squashed in a car with fifty random wild children. Maybe just one or two of my own. But I’m getting off-track.)
Maybe I wonder about this kind of thing too much. I don’t know. How can you tell if you think about the future too much or not enough? Not that I think about this every single day. Just today. Just today.
I will always crave freedom. No matter what age I am, that feeling of getting out and doing something will always get to me. Even if freedom is scary, it will always be yearned for.
And I’m not saying that I will always feel trapped into an environment, or that I do. Freedom doesn’t have to mean getting in a car and leaving things behind. Freedom for me is dropping burdens that aren’t yours to carry. Giving God permission to align your emotions with memories. Being honest with someone and not holding in your true thoughts or feelings.
Freedom is having a day off and letting yourself relax. Giving yourself permission to look after yourself. Letting yourself do what you want to do and not following the crowd. Accepting parts of yourself that you had always rejected.
Sometimes we trap ourselves on purpose. And we don’t like it but we do it anyway. I do it to myself all the time, then I wonder why, symbolically, it gets harder and harder to breathe, to keep my head above water. We-ell, campers, let me tell you, I still don’t know why I do it. It’s just…a thing that’s in process in my life right now. One of the many.
Sarah xx
the softest words 