Free At Last

I was watching a show on 20/20 the other night. Now before you go making snap judgments, let me make a few judgments of my own. I haven’t watched 20/20 in over 20 years. It seems like 20/20 caters to a very elderly suburban mindset. Not that there is anything wrong with a suburban mindset or being old (but please see Barbara Walters reference below), it just I ain’t any of those. Plus how many interviews do we have to watch with Barbara Walters? Isn’t she ready for a rest home yet? So tangents aside, I was bored and had no TV so I went online and chose this very special episode of 20/20:

http://vp2.abc.go.com/watch/2020/166626/233952/amish-teens-at-crossroads

It is about Amish teens who run away from home to escape the crushing tenants of their faith. They want ‘freedom’. We, as an audience, know what they mean as “freedom” – it is not to vote or wanting a better life for their family, it is to listen to AC/DC, smoke, drink and have sex. The virtues our nation was founded on.

They come out innocent and doe eyed and it isn’t long before they have that vapid look most modern day teenagers have. It is a sadness and a confusion mixed with a musky scent of pubescent hormones. I yell at the TV (ok maybe I am an elderly suburbanite and just don’t know it), “Go back to your Amish family! You are going down a dead end road!”

One doe eyed innocent ends up in jail because he was experiencing his new found freedom by drinking Bud Light then setting Amish buggies on fire. We should add that freedom to the Bill of Rights.

It makes me think of my time during my meditation courses. I fight and struggle because I can no longer do what I want to do (that is “I”, “I”, “I”). I do not WANT to meditate – I want to watch Jerry Springer! NOW! And give me a big bag of Doritos and make it snappy! I fantasize about escaping just like those Amish teens. When I first started taking courses, I struggled the whole 10 days. Now I settle down after 5 days and realize that the fawning for freedom is just an illusion, just as is our modern society.

The 20/20 episode followed about 5 runaway Amish teens for 2 years. A few went back to the Amish way of life because they missed their families. In the end, that is what it is all about. It is not about TV, nor fast food, nor sex, drugs or rock ‘n roll, and it is not about the word that people say makes our nation GREAT and that is freedom. Freedom is a word that really has no meaning because it means that someone or thing is not allowing you do what you want to do. That’s an illusion because everything you need is inside. The only person who can take that away from you is the great and freedom loving “I”.

#14, Please. Calling #14.

I am on the road again. This is 14^th time traveling across country. It is déjà vu all over again.

If there is one thing I have learned in my short life, is that life wash, rinses and repeats itself. I had the thought the other day as the countryside was whirring past me, “why has my life been in a flux for the majority of my life?”

I chose my wandering lifestyle very early on in my life but I think that choice was sparked by something that was innate in my wild soul. It is like how baby whales can swim at birth or baby giraffes can stand and run minutes after birth: it is in their DNA. Well, my wandering soul is in my DNA. I could not chose anything but this lifestyle.

Then I asked myself, “What am I to learn from this constant wandering?” I then thought when I took up this iterant lifestyle what it felt like for me. Nerve racking is the thought that came to mind. I am a person who likes order and a Wandering Lifestyle bitch slaps Order often. It demands respect for its flashy chaos or look out for a shiner. Well, I have gotten bitch slapped some many times when I was younger that I almost forgot what normal felt like. I would usually start smoking like a fiend or doing some other self destructive habit to take me away from the uncomfortable feelings of chaos. But the therein lies the rub: feeling. Feeling is not uncomfortable or comfortable: it just is.

I just got out of a 2-week meditation retreat that focuses on sensation in the body as a tool to living a better life. Feeling pain? Observe it as sensation rather than creating the mental pain to go along with the physical pain. Feeling good? Observe it. Don’t judge one good or the other bad because on a sub molecular level they are both the same – just a mass of vibrating atoms doing what nature intended.

So I am on the road again going to a place I am not sure. But I am trying not to reach for a stimulant to divert my feelings, I am really trying to enjoy the scenery as it unfolds in glorious unplannedness.