“Today I will live free.”
I wrote those words out by hand this morning and felt an immediate release. I wrote them because I needed to. I just got back from some time off to deliberately do little but rest and reflect, and immediately I felt the pressing weight of the Other upon me.
The Other is anything and everything that does not come from within. It’s all the great ideas and people and tasks and activities that bombard me from without. They’re all wonderful things, and nothing but expressions of the agency of others. Yet they’re not me, and if I internalize them, or interact with them in any way that has a responsive orientation, I become trapped.
There is so much information out there. If my life is only to collect it, gather, sort, label, react, and respond to it, I am an automaton. But I’m not an automaton. I live and breath passionate freedom. I can’t afford to play my life in response mode.
I had to commit to myself and to the world that I will live free today. Just one day. Anyone can do that, right?
So today I don’t care about anyone else’s information. I don’t care about opinions. I don’t care about any ‘shoulds’ or ‘oughts’ flying my way. I care about living my journey for truth, freely and with abandon. Only then will I have the excess creative capacity to engage fully the wide world of the Other.