The Freedom to Try Again

Someone joked you complement my colors in talking about clothing. Maybe you can still get a woman to like you. Maybe you would complement her personality, her style, her humor, her looks or some of her other good qualities. Well what then are the colors of freedom that complement you and your hopes? I spoke to someone who said about her job, sometimes when I take a walk at lunch, I want to just keep walking. If she did keep on walking, having felt this way about her job, did she really lose anything significant or that mattered to her. She would have probably laughed about her experience a few weeks. I might feel like I want to just keep on walking by sometimes. We do need some adherence to norms, standards, to operate successfully in a systematized society. You and I are free to come 5 minutes late for a train but the train is not going to wait for us, because this train didn’t know you were coming. If the train had known you were coming, it would have waited, because you are the best. At the same time people find a real encroachment on their time, their focus, their ability to walk in the land, by outside forces. These forces can be institutional in nature or from institutions we have created. What happens is when we are walking on a course that seems to be less free we are compromising distinction. There are distinct ideas, distinct passions, distinct ways that can be examined if we stop compromising our freedom to go ahead. The scientist needs some freedom to operate and further distinguish and identify what can be identified. In the animal kingdom there are a distinct number of classifications of animals, in the Brazilian forest a distinct range of plants and herbs some of which have been found to be useful for medicinal purposes. In the seas, there are distinct kinds and varied forms of aquatic life, some of it found at enormous depths of the sea beyond the reach of submarines. On the land, there are distinct views, from many places on the earth. In the movie Castaway, Tom Hanks turns in each direction from his view at the very top of the island and then his facial expression is telling when he observes the gigantic waves close to the islands shores on all sides will indeed, keep him away from the vast open calm sea,, that he is indeed surrounded by the huge waves at each run, castaway at every side and his expression is telling to his realization that this is what is. The planets and the stars are mysteries that can be observed. The Milky Way has distinct star systems that can be partially observed by eye in certain locations at certain times from the earth. Of course we can only get the view of the Milky Way from our particular location and vantage point.. But amongst such classifications such as these, the rivers, the classification of different plants, sea life, all yield to continued distinctions. So we need the freedom to find and make and determine distinctions. Something to ponder for any situation, is where it the freedom located and where can I find the place of freedom in this situation? Is it close by, within the reach of who I am now, and where are the actual points of freedom to contend with? Freedom from can involve a decision to circumvent or just not take that leap into a situation, not partake with the masses. This cause, that course can be bypassed or set aside for good. It is interesting how if people were involved with a course where they could design their own landscape, they would not include this and would never include that. Or they would always want this and never exclude that on the other side. If given the symbolic blank check what would people actually do with this? But some of the gifts we actually have can amount to blank checks that we can cash in on at some point with some freely applied effort, that concept doesn’t only apply to money and it’s remuneration but other maybe less tangible gifts. A great singing voice could be a blank check to the holder. But only you can cash that check because its your voice. The ability to appreciate the written word can be a blank check. Some athletic, intellectual, spiritual gifts and talents could constitute a blank check if you actually do something with these gifts in freedom, bypassing the previous restrictions coming from anyone including yourself. We have the blank check in so many ways we just don’t know how to cash it. And then maybe we need to try again. We can’t do this unless we are free. If I seem to fail, and that failure is final, then I’m not free to try again. But the idea of trying again refers to the concept of freedom. It is documented that Thomas Edison needed to try again and again before he came to his famous inventions and discoveries that are still having a profound impact and spun at the time into whole industries. Results did not always come through right away for him, but often they came later on, after numerous tries. The situation is that we might find ourselves in is getting into problem after problem. How free are we going to feel if we are always in the problem-solving mode, and nothing seems to feel right? The ground I walk on always seems to be falling out from under me. I can get to the starting line, but my sneakers can’t grip the track. How can I race for the gold? How can I erase this sinking feeling? At this point it would be great to just walk on solid ground again. And what are my primary interests and what radiates from that in freedom. My first interest might be to read historical fiction but that could radiate entertainment, diversion from the routine, stimulating my imagination, stirring forth emotions and obtaining some factual history which was weaved into the fictional account. Does friendship radiate from romance or does romance radiate from friendship? It all depends on the individuals involved and how they see it, and it can change for each of them as they go along. Friendship could have been the primary motivation, which then radiated into romance, or the reverse may have been true. All this calls into question the idea of ownership. We work with these ideas when we say we have x amount of dollars, we own a certain amount of property or we own a variety of material items. If we are going to work with the concept of ownership, maybe we should consider the idea of having friends, contacts, good health, native intelligence and common sense, life experience, a given set of knowledge, an ability to generate new and exciting ideas or any other concept that has personal meaning to us can be put under the conceptualizations of ownership. I own this experience, at least for a while. Maybe we need to bring more under the concept of ownership to move forward in freedom. Ability at times justifies its use in freedom. Substitute the word power for talent or for ability. I have the power to sing for example. And then who owns the sun? Who owns the ocean, the rivers, the mountains and the falling snow? There was a movie, the journey to the center of the Earth. Who was owner of that center of the earth? Say you go to the beach. They charge you 12 dollars at the toll for the beach, 5 dollars for the parking, 2 dollars for the sun, 2 dollars for the ocean itself, a dollar for the sea breeze, and another two for the sea air. Could something like this happen? Look at how many of us pay 2 dollars a bottle for water. Does the sun make its appearance just for you? Maybe it does at times. But that doesn’t mean we own it. Is it yours, is it mine, would you be my Valentine? I might have stockpiled all sorts of assets never to use them. Ever hear of the expression, the state has seized their assets. This applies to bankruptcy or similar legal proceedings. But maybe we should seize our own assets and do something with them before its too late. And then we can consider whether we should refer anything to the concept of ownership. Do I own anything at all? Even the money I have in the bank has no value except as a form of correspondence that will get me some other form of correspondence. Many things I have don’t take on its value until it’s used. So the paradox is, if I don’t use something, I don’t put as much value on it. I can hit a baseball 400 feet plus, but I almost never play baseball. So the value of being able to hit a baseball 400 feet goes down for me. I could potentially run a 4-minute mile, but I haven’t run in 2 years. So I do not value my running ability as much as when I am running or did actually run. So we can look at almost anything and say, what do I own here, should I refer this to the concept of ownership. Anything that is suddenly taken away from you or me is probably something we felt we owned. So our good health, if it is suddenly compromised, is something we would love to have back. Take this test, what do you have that if you lost it, you would love to get back? I might be more likely to sing if I felt I owned a good voice. I might be more likely to talk to people if I felt I owned good conversational abilities. So we can adjust our thinking back and forth based on whether we want to refer an individual situation to the concept of ownership or not refer to this concept at all. If we do that then we can say we don’t own the money in our personal banking account, it is just another good flowing into and out of my life and it is not something that I actually own. It all depends how we want to work with the concept. We could put time to the concept of ownership as an example. I own these hours. Anything that someone would pay for, that you have and they might not have or vice versa, is something that we could refer to ownership. Maybe you have a luxurious head of hair, and the person next to you on the train just wishes he or she that had that and would pay for that for themselves if it could be brought. So the concept of ownership can cut across many personal landscapes. And the concept of ownership does have some relations to freedom. I don’t own this or I am not even renting it, so I can’t use it. We can take this concept across most of our dealings and we can see that it often does have subtle relations to freedom. Realistically, though, the concept of ownership does become vague as I stray away from the more concrete examples of this. Yet, this might be what stops me. I feel I need to own the situation, the opportunity, the chance, the moment, when, this is just the left over effect of feeling I need to own things before I proceed. Even, if I am a rich man or woman, technically just about all of what is out there I can't legally claim ownership too. Even the richest people on the planet, can't claim to own all that much. So I'll have to proceed in with a sense of worthiness derived from some other source of thinking, depending on what I am doing. Getting back to the beach example, I pay 10 dollars to get on the beach, but after that, everything is free, such as the swim. Maybe I can say, I own this wave coming to shore. But the wave really could be for anyone. I might possess this or be in possession of say a good sense of humor. The next step might be to activate on this, which might be hard to do in a gloomy atmosphere. Generally, I can think about some of the good assets and qualities I do possess, and why I have or haven’t chosen to activate upon them. If a firm gives me a debit card, I have to freely go and active on this card, before I put it into use. So in designing a given landscape, there are some if not many options. Most people if they planted a garden might want strawberries, but if you really don’t want strawberries in your garden, why have them. And leave some room for mercy in your personal garden for all things. Maybe we want freedom from certain individuals and the agenda they espouse, thereby leaving them off from our own personal landscape. Say I have a job and it is to tie up the lines and throw out the anchor, or man the ropes in this boat. Legitimate hard work, but I really want another job on this boat, or maybe I don’t want to be on this boat at all. I can take my party elsewhere. I can jump ship to another job on the ship or I can literally jump ship, so in one fashion or another, I am free to do this, I am free to stay or leave. Another thing that we see is that people come under a seeming umbrella that partly forms through their individual upbringing and the people and circumstances around them. Witness the movie the Godfather with Al Pacino and Mr. Brando. It was all within the big or enlarged family that the huge and uncertain drama takes place with some violent overtones. Not that this is necessarily bad to all viewers, but do I have the freedom to come out from under an umbrella that has set my feet on a certain path, if I wish. Even my concept of righteousness might form into a type of unseen umbrella, which keeps out the rain but also the sun, keeping me away from the bad and also some of the good. Can step off my personal high mountain and come into the valley of possibilities that were still waiting for me. One possible way to seek out freedom in our thinking it to put equal weight on all considerations really just for the keep up of our thinking. If one of the considerations begins to lose weight, then that begins to tell us something. Fill all the balloons with air and due consideration and see which one loses air and loses it quickly. So you gave each balloon a chance. Maybe I just want to be less weighed down. Look at the Olympic swimmers do they swim in blue jeans while going for the gold? They were these special Speedo trunks which have the least resistance to water and weigh them down the least so they can move more freely towards that vaunted gold medal or even a silver or bronze medal. You don’t have all the power but you need some freedom to play your part. And freedom does relate to power even if only in small ways. How can I be romantic with a girl if I can’t hold her hand? Denzel Washington gave a critically acclaimed performance as Ruben Carter in the movie Hurricane. He spends half the movie in jail, but even in jail he needed the leeway to give a charismatic performance. Picture yourself at both ends of the spectrum you are considering. It is like being in a marathon and the middle of the race, make believe at that point you are at the end, or make believe you are at the beginning, even though you are still half way through. Then you might not get stuck in the middle in your thinking. I feel old at 30. Well fathom yourself at 40 and see how that feels and fits. Fathom yourself at 20 and see how you think about that. Take your thinking to each end of a given spectrum. Don’t always keep your thinking right in the middle, even if you actually happen to be located in the middle. But the absolute key word to this particular process is the word apex. Are you at freedoms apex? We may have tripped several times or even have outright fallen. But we might still be at an apex for this opportunity. We have to at least consider the possibility that as much water as has gone over the fall or has not gone over the falls; we could be at the very apex right now for something we want to do. So we can’t say it’s too early or too late. Freedom does have its situational apex and we have to consider where and when it will be found. I might have abandoned parts of myself to routine, isolating myself from the pomp and circumstance that I still look to with an envious eye, I’m almost married to the paycheck and the hours, holding on to this or that with the inability to let go and let live in the present, still waiting for that distant self I have yet to become before I say yes, or when my ruminations will finally bring me into the present time or find some landing point back in the real world I live in now. So maybe I’m ditching who I am today to my own loss, saying an early goodbye to my present concerns while trying to pinpoint them somewhere on that mostly uncertain, even mostly unknown map of the future. I am putting myself and my resources on a map I can’t even see yet because the arrival is to far in the distance time wise, a map that might not have formed in reality yet or may never form. But for any difficulty or problem where are the points of freedom. Maybe I don’t do some of these things because I don’t feel free to having anything but a certain result. Then certainty becomes the manner of rule.

I’m operating within certain confines as to the results that I must have. I’m confined to my agenda of the moment, my most present agenda which I can’t seem to mix and match to the ever changing circumstances of the moment. Yes, I’ll go skiing but only if I get the most excellent rides down the slope and the snow is 2 feet deep... Yes, I’ll go fishing but only if they are running well and in visible schools and I’m certain of the catch. So, I control the D.J. as well. Play my songs, baby. Yes, I’ll go dancing but only if they play my songs all night long. Yes, I’ll listen to you in the here and now but only if you say what I want to hear and say it now. There is no pat answer no guaranteed reference point no one size fits all. Our reference points themselves might be in motion, and we could be stymied by trying to run in tandem with them, or I hold on to my misguided belief that they remained stationary just for me. Does the world stand still for you and me? It used to. The party might be over by the time you get there. I ran all day, I got myself in great shape but the party was over. Why didn’t they wait for me? Maybe the trains will leave the door open for you and you can still catch it running. They actually depict this idea in some Westerns where they jump a moving train. Or even if our reference points aren’t in motion they seem to be. Ever park at a crowded beach parking lot and they go back and try to find where you actually parked among thousands of cars? Or sat in vast rows of people, and went out and came back trying to find exactly where you were sitting in the first place? Neither the car nor the rows moved from their original point but you lost your frame of reference, whatever that was. Maybe you parked next to a light post and you forgot that. Or you did have a lot going for you, and you forgot that. You were sitting next to a beautiful blond and you forgot that. I can reset my personal compass to a changing longitude. But many people feel annoyed, agitated, checkered, disappointed, and upset for reasons that ultimately refer to a sense of freedom. So look at any individual situation or idea we give a passing salute to and further reference the concept of freedom and what freedom means to you in this particular situation. As an exercise, you could write your thoughts under a headline, such as what does freedom mean to me in this situation. It is a valid headline because it is your headline. What does freedom mean to me as a garbage collector, as a translator of a foreign language, as a teacher, as a pursuer of knowledge in international events or sports, as a connoisseur of the movies? Take for example the movies, do you censor yourself and only go to certain movies. If you want, you are free to do this. You might want to avoid certain movies that are excessively or gratuitously violent. The degree of self-censorship is subject to personal freedom of choice with its various applications and continuing consequences. We tend to look at freedom as some sort of global concept or right, but we need also to look at it on a more individual basis, and ponder its more personal meanings, resonance’s, and those personal practical applications. Freedom could be just another vantage point, taking in another view, the ability to bring something else into the forefront of my thoughts, helping decipher the language of the new and changing circumstances of the world I’m in. Freedom could be the right to seek in my own way, in whatever I want to seek, to take that more winding road with a different view when everybody else wants the straight path to the point of arrival. And then what is freedom herself pointing to for me, where does that finger of freedom point for me. The freedom to go back, in more than just memory only, it might be nostalgia but I really still like the Beatles and the tunes of the days gone by. I can’t go back to those concerts because I don’t have a time tunnel back, but I can still go back to the songs by record. Maybe we can find encouragement within this freedom. For example, any ray of hope that might be found as we loosen those tightly held reins can be helpful towards feeling at home with this newly minted freedom, finally found along the way on a forming pathway. The most difficult paths might lead to a comforting oasis. Say for example, I run into tremendous traffic going to the beach. I begin to equate this with my upcoming experience at the beach. I finally get to the beach, everything is perfect, the setting, the scene, and the waves are just what I like. I find my oasis. So if I had turned around because of the difficult traffic, I would have missed this. So sometimes we need to realize although the trip to Oz might be difficult, it isn’t necessarily telling as to what Oz will be like. We never know when and where exactly the oasis can come up. The road to nirvana can be bumpy but we can still refer to nirvana in our thinking and our imaging’s if we want to. But maybe that oasis never came for you. It was a long and difficult road leading to another long and difficult road. But remember that this doesn’t mean that oasis wasn’t there, you might have just missed it, by taking a wrong turn and you might still find it, somewhere outside of the forest of your present difficulties. And why was there so much traffic on the way to the beach. Everybody is looking for that oasis. Any large gathering, a popular concert, a packed movie theater or football stadium, represents a oasis for a large group of people. I go to the racetrack, I bet my horses, I am free to make varied bets. Recently, I went to the racetrack, and bet a dollar to win on all 13 horses in a particular race. It was the Breeders Cup and all the horses had to be of a certain quality just to race, but yet some of these horses were in the range of 50 to 1 in this race, so there I had a chance at some long shot money. As it turned out a favorite came in and I got back only 7.50 back on the 13 dollars. But I was free to bet in this particular manner, the ticket I purchased showed one dollar to win, horses 1 thru 13. There is the freedom to make my bets and then change my bets if I wish. I might say, I don't want to tackle numbers in a work situation. So I wouldn't be a financial analyst then. Don't try and tackle something if it really is too big for you, imagine being in the NFL and trying to tackle refrigerator Perry or Ed " Too tall Jones". It would be a quite impossible for most people. Be realistic in what you are trying to tackle and this will free you up for more reasonable tries without going ahead with the feeling that you have to go overboard to make due. And then this freedom of course includes freedom not to. This may be a way of holding to your position by not compromising your original stand. I want to good relationship with the opposite sex within a certain context or framework. This is not happening. So I can say I am free to do nothing in this area if I can’t find something within this context. Sometimes your best stance is to do nothing. Hold the line. You are free not to compromise your general outline. For example, I say I will not work in an office or a concern unless it’s with reasonably honest people. You find yourself in an office where dishonesty is rampart although it is highly unlikely that anybody will ever get caught. However, in your personal freedom watch, you are watching from the lens or scope of freedom, which allows you to quit this job, separating yourself from the situation, which is outside of parameters, which you will hold or adhere to as your choice. This freedom could include freedom from more extreme or widening risks or risk extraneous to your prior thinking on a subject including such thoughts and actions you are willing to take on. There are inherent risks to freedom and all its undertakings, but you don’t need to go overboard if you don’t have to. I saw a segment on TV where in a country where there resided one of the top ten poisonous snakes in the world, an individual captured one of these giant snakes with his bare hands in the outer forest, and held it from behind by the neck with his bare hand as he was getting it’s venom bring back to the science labs so the anti venom can be worked on, all the while talking to the camera about what he was doing. Maybe a good day job for this person, but not for me. Suppose he lost his grip on the snake and it turned for a quick bite. I think they said he would have about 7 minutes from that point. There was no anti venom yet because that is what he was working on. So we have the freedom to keep our parameters and basic outline, or to chuck it to the wind forever. Or we can change the parameters if we want to the degree we want. We can change 10 degrees, 30 degrees 50 degrees if you like, or go for the utmost and do a 180-degree turn. I don’t have to assume all the risk upfront. I can work with the smaller outline as well as the larger outline. A common example is dating. I could say I want to go to the play and the amusement park for this date. But I might not want to also outline the date to try and determine whether this person is going to be a life’s mate. By doing this, I am trying also for a bigger outline than I necessarily have to, making the task seem larger and maybe more unapproachable. I am possibly increasing the perceived risk scenario when I don’t have to. Not only do I have to find the amusement park for the date, I only have to figure out on this date whether this person is a potential life mate, a tall task. I can just assume the smaller risk of today’s dating outline absence of imposing far reaching decisions. Freedom could be the freedom to see the limits our dreams. You could have a dream job, a dream relationship, a dream trip in mind. All this might not be so easily obtained, but you can maintain that freedom in your vision, in how far can you see, and in seeing whether this was that ideal and truth which you really would have been happy with if in freedom you were able to see your dreams through. So freedom in its outlines sometimes deals with a sense of sight, we go forward with the open eyes of our choosing, ready to see if not greet the welcoming possibilities, not with eyes blindly following a preset agenda that could suddenly fall away, nor giving a blind eye to other not planned for truths or falsehoods as they come into sight. Seeing from your own personal lookout point, from your individual lighthouse where you can scan the tempestuous seas, from your watching point where you can at least begin to find out. And you could enlist friends, allies who can help in your walk towards freedom, looking in and out and beyond for you from this side or that side, scanning the new horizons on your behalf. Think of the football scout looking at prospects for the pro’s or college at the QB position. He goes to a game, watches this QB prospect for two sets of downs and reaches a conclusion. Would you say this scout did a good and thorough job? He couldn’t even sit through the complete game or even a half a game. Sometimes we scout situations for ourselves or even make conclusions as to our own abilities without doing the proper homework or making conclusions in a quick summary fashion that just doesn’t let us project properly. We are finalizing our plans over very little evidence where more evidence can be had. Or the lights dim a little bit so I might as well pull the plug completely. This scout could have watched the complete set of plays on offense, and he might not have come to a qualified conclusion but he would have given himself a better chance to come up with a more objective and useful scouting report regardless. You can be free not to jump to conclusions so often especially when you didn't do your homework and you know you didn’t. Maybe your dream job was to be a TV repairman and when you go there you were half disappointed. But freedom did see me through to getting job, it is a good job, but I wanted to get there and find out if it was the final dream and maybe didn’t meet with me at that level. When you play your next deck of cards, deal in some freedom cards. Search for that freedom which finds out, which explores further into the still hopefully ample fields of tomorrows dreams. There might be such a thing a soiled or spoiled freedom it’s less than I would have wanted ideally. So I have granulated coffee instead of its pure form. But hey I still wanted to stop at Starbuck’s and enjoy hanging out, so I’m here. And I’m still drinking coffee. This idea freedom might cut across the time line. Can I free myself from what I thought about in the distant past, from the happenings and views of yesterday and the day before? Should I carry all things forward, or should I leave some things behind? For example, there have been people who have invested 4 years of their time in medical school, and did well in school, then decided they didn’t want to be a doctor. They took a more circular route to somewhere else. Or they did become a doctor but switched specialties. People have studied law for years and subsequently passed the bar exam and then practiced law. All free choices to divert from chosen fields of study, made without being forcibly compelled by the prior efforts to continue on a chosen path. And then I am free to selectively incorporate that which I will from my past journeys including that which has already told me yes I can. That word itself, selection, is such a key word. Who is doing the selecting for me and why? But we do sometimes carry the heavy baggage into the future, when we could just lighten up and drop it at the next station. I also might think, what moves have I made towards what I want to do. I might be so entrenched in indecision, that looking back I realize I have made just about no moves on the chessboard. And in the game of chess, you have to make some moves, to get anywhere in the game. You can’t always know what the move will later entail due to the dynamics of the game itself. I can try this or that, but I never have perfect knowledge of how things are going to play. It might not be worth it to go into a Herculean effort when the dam will burst or things will cave in as soon as you diminish or relinquish your efforts a bit. You might be holding things up or together by a shoestring. A friend once told me, his major criteria for anything is, “Is it worth it?” Bring that question right to the forefront for consideration and it will help for sure. Can I be free from the need to project into a future that I don’t see yet? Can I back away from the sunrise, by getting there or trying to get there before clarity and vision come? If I interview a prospective employee do I need to project that he or she will be a 5 year employee when I don’t even know if the company or its markets will be there in 5 years? Do I have to base a future on my numerous observations of the past days, adding them up into their cumulative sum which then forms a nice summary to project off and then projecting them into the next horizon, and thereby conclude in knowing fashion that this will happen when the only guarantee I’ll ever have is that there is no guarantee. Today is not the sum of yesterday. In fact those numerous observations might not do it, so you have to start today with something else. But maybe that first impression, that first goal, is correct at least in part. I first wanted a blond, my preferences in women have since evolved and now I also like brunettes But that doesn’t mean if I do meet a blond now, that my original goal is now invalid or wrong for me now, that I cannot go back to the original superficial blueprint. When I grew up in America, the standard lunch was a hamburger French fries and a coke. Things have evolved since then, the menus have expanded, and McDonalds and the like have chicken, fish, and so on. But that doesn’t mean I can’t go back and have my original order that was the staple of its day, like baseball, cracker jacks and apple pie. Look at some of the nostalgia, what people hold to, the people that restore cars, the searching again for the right stuff, all pointing to a restored feeling or experience I still want to revisit in some way. I want a classic coke as it was my first love. Or that favorite show that I still want to see from years back that has become associated with a personal era. Where is the DVD? We might associate seeing a movie with a certain time of our lives when we were actually happy for a moment. As I sift through the newly emerging evidence, do I give up the old automatically? The original blueprint might have been good as it still holds some fading allure. Look at some people that would still go back to the old fashioned automate for lunch, or I might still want a root beer float after all these years, and even if Gilligan never got off that island, I still go back to that see that show again. There is also the freedom not to do everything, be everything, and refer to every thought and idea at once. You can isolate on ideas and approaches that you want to pursue now, letting go of approaches that might have been mightily engrained in your thinking but you are free to drop for now in order to isolate on another approach. There is freedom of cadence and personal pacing. The freedom to isolate on and focus on even a specific instance of thought and carry it through to new possiblities. Then we are also dealing with in simple, small, close by freedoms that might make a difference. The freedoms involved are so close or small that we don’t even realize it’s an issue of freedom. I might have to wear a suit and tie again at work after being in a casual dress environment for so long. These freedoms are so small we take them for granted, but they would be highlighted if they were taken away. Suppose they discontinued my favorite candy, my favorite drink, or my favorite show on TV. All of the sudden, what I assumed would always be available isn’t there anymore. There are no blonds left on the planet, I have to settle for a brunette. I could now only take a hot shower once a week because of the water shortage. Where did my hot shower water go? It ditched me. I can’t get the type haircut I want anymore, what I liked went out of style. A personal example was when I played my first year of little league baseball, at every at bat I was badgered by the assistant coach who I guess meant well to keep my elbow up and swing level. I couldn’t swing then freely for the fences. I had no home runs and a low batting average for the season. The following year, with a different coach who left me alone to swing away for the fences, I could drop my hands and elbow without constant instructions to do otherwise and go back to my more natural swing and I did have some nicely hit home runs and a much higher average to boot. But maybe a compromise can be reached. In order to swing more freely, I’ll agree to some adjustment in the rules of the game, maybe a pop fly to the infield is now an automatic out. I want this freedom, but I’ll allow for another rule that relates to this freedom to come in as a compromise between the elements being discussed. We can make a bargain with the day, forgetting my previous lapses in relation to what I wanted then and now. But does the deal we make with the day, the passage of time, the changing circumstances of our life, include those cherished freedoms. Or did I deal them out this time, muffling those voices that call me forth to somewhere new, bargaining them away, bartering away some freedoms for a safer but less free vision of who I was then and who I could be now. Have you sold your rights, folding your hand against your hallowed beliefs, vanquishing and banishing the freedoms from your own personal kingdom and fiefdom, letting freedom pass by like the last fading rays of the falling sun, letting freedom pass you by yet one more time, leaving you alone as the forgotten companion and friend. Then, you may have bartered away freedom when there was no give and take. You give up rights, but get nothing in return. Going back to the baseball example, you not only have you freedom taking away to swing freely, maybe you don’t even get to play the field now, you are only the DH. The bartering away from freedom netted you nothing. And then there is that primal call to freedom, that call of the wild. You see this take form with people that take more extreme risks like skydiving or something like that. You might want to tap that ability to take on risk but also channel it in a way that will get you to another day. See another sunrise. But there can be a subtle loss of freedom within particular goals, however small. I want to read the whole NY Times, so I end up being not free to read say just the one article. I find myself lacking unless I read at least 10 articles. Why this seeming shortfall is this seen as a free fall on my goals when reading just the one article can be quite valuable as well. I need to give myself freedom to find value and if it is only in one or two articles I can make it too so be it. I find myself riddled with guilt that I cannot seem to meet my prior goals. Instead of trying to solve the riddle, I let guilt rain upon it. My newspaper is all wet with the guilt I rained upon it, and I can’t read anything now. Are you going to get the crossword puzzle done on the Sunday Times by running on a guilt trip? Solve the puzzle. I may still want to cover more territory but I can cover less or more territory based on what I want to do in freedom. And if I cover less territory, I don’t have to take a guilty trip to guilty land, and cover my wagon train with guilt because I didn’t make it all the way west. I can’t read any fiction because it will not translate into a set of knowledge that will net me dollars, so I have to wait until my bank account is swelling with money before I can afford to spend time on this pursuit. So in effect, I am in a way not free to read fiction now, I’m effectively locked out on reading fiction for now, and although I could enjoy this and I have the capacity for this now, my bank account doesn’t let me. My goal of a lot of money in the bank has been a mountainous chore shading away other chances, and has usurped and obscured my present interest in maybe relaxing and reading some fiction. Reading fiction has become objectionable as I let the search for the gold further obtuse my other interests. I never get to that other place. I lose my other views from my high mountain, I got to the summit of Everest but I was above the atmosphere and I can’t see those other earthly opportunities or even pour myself another cup of soup. Everything is a crapshoot, but it is less of a crapshoot if you can go freely into areas of your strengths that we might have seen had we not been stopped by the voices that say no. We not only voluntarily inhibited our weaknesses, but even our strengths. Why haven’t given myself a license to operate within my strengths? I have these good qualities, I sweep them under the deck, and so I end up with an immaculate deck, that looks great from the distance with such an impeccable view from afar. The perfect noonday sun sparkles on this shining deck. But, where I am on the deck? Where are you on the deck? Where are we on the deck? In fact, I can’t find any of us there. Had we really obtained the ideal view? The landscape was so beautiful, but never full, the occupant sign continually says vacant. There were beautiful scenes and posh landscapes waiting for us. But I never got there. I heard you never got there. In fact, none of us made an appearance there. What are my strengths really? What are my weaknesses? It is not so easy to sift through and separate the two. Passion could spur us on to new heights or catch us in our greatest weaknesses. Where does passion lie then, in our strengths or our weaknesses? Or does freedom have its say here? By the common lumping together process, we classify our weaknesses as strengths or vice versa. The truth is that our greatest strengths can be found within some of our seeming weaknesses. Those are the nuggets of gold that we must find as we sift through. My strengths could have been posted on the most wanted trail. Where were my strengths post and prior, now and then? You could picture those safe havens in your mind. That safe haven could be revisiting both in your mind and in a reality that is presenting itself in the form of hints. Where are they rolling out the red carpet for you? If this situation isn’t royal and regal it isn’t the safe harbor. If that level of engagement isn’t there, they might cast you out sooner if not later. Even your thoughts can leave the safe harbor, instead of rolling out the red carpet for ourselves, we dynamite against ourselves in our own thinking. If your own thoughts cast you out, then you haven’t even found a safe harbor in your own contemplations. The thought, I can’t hit the jumper, or the rising fastball, doesn’t get us in the game. The safe haven should also be seen as such by you. It certainly is not a place that is a lightning rod for the negative. And this place could be your place of thinking. What is the location of your thinking? Get back to those thoughts that will harbor your best assets in freedom. An example of all this could be someone who wants to do something, yet ultimately does not see it being a safe harbor. More than likely, they will procrastinate until they can see what about this could form into a safe harbor. See it you can catch things on the bounce. You still have a chance on the bounce back, maybe on the very next bounce. There are opportunities off the bounce. Every chance that you take is a chance that is taken. Situations might form into a web or network. You might have a network of friends and relationships that overlap or network of business contacts. Or a web of interests and choices that relate in some way. But these interests as they become complex have the potential to become tangled. If you have ever gone fishing on a party boat, there is potential to really tangle the lines, and it can be very difficult to untangle the fishing lines. In the same way, we need to operate freely and try to avoid and then get out of ways we can get tangled up in these webs. A simple example could be a group of girls who are friends in high school. Gossip can spread among these mutual friends and one friend could get in trouble with most of the group. So gossip could cause entanglements in these webs of friendships, just like having several fishermen get their lines tangled up with each other on the fishing boat. This example shows how the free choice to gossip can have a resonance within a given network or web of relationships beyond its initial scope. Of course a web or network can be a rich and fruitful web. A bunch of mutual friends who keep in touch over the years with each other is an example of a rich web. Or you take a number of courses where there is helpful overlap as to the learning and this is a rich network of knowledge which has formed. Change can be in two directions, not just one, or even make it three. So this is another thing to consider, I may be changing in two areas rather than just the one I seem to think about most. I need then to see therefore in two directions, and also look in two directions as I’m changing in two directions. I can get tangled up again, I can trip over myself because I think I’m changing in only one direction, when it is two or more directions that my current movements are changing in. I might think even that this is a bit odd or strange, and therefore, count me out. But there are so many things you have done, in ways that were both acceptable to you and others, that there might be a chance that you could have a similar feel for this, this thing that seems so alien to your hopes right now. But really I’m just trying to fish. How can I do this with freedom when my lines are so tangled? You might be just as interested elsewhere. A little bit more freedom might do the trick or be the trick of the trade. This freedom could include a shakeup of the thoughts we hold so dearly about ourselves. I can put those closely held thoughts, at a bit of a distance, or at a little less of a premium. The problems indeed are coming through so close to the situation that we lose sight of the objective mirror as we pass by. Our present opinion of ourselves in based partly on the more subjective reality held by me only. We might be victims of our own gloomy prognosis that leaves us looking in the dust of formerly good opportunities. Can we sometimes settle in on a less gloomy view of our potentialities and ourselves? Ease up a bit on the brakes you have put on your personal freedom train and try to keep your train ride moving in some smooth, positive, and flowing forward fashion. At least give yourself a chance to peruse some of the evidence that you might be wrong as you sift further through the sands of possibility, that you could let the movie have a different ending or somehow find and believe for a better ending, or a different story line that had more appeal to the wider audience of me and them, that you might still be able to move in another chosen direction, rather than continually and conditionally resubscribing to the disrupting thoughts that blanket across your landscape, a twirling and twisting subscript that soon becomes predominate in your own personal movie, clouding your way. Can you cancel your subscription to disaster now? I have these thoughts that have now become corrosive and swollen with negativity. It is far easier to paint all with the same negative brush, swelling the storm, then to search out the good parts that still remain in the mix containing some good yet to be mined. Instead, leave the picture as is with some of those good scenes in the mix. Try to mine the positives. There are ways you can go on the still sunlit course, either automatically or not automatically. Or try to hang in there until the sunrise comes for you Ever see a movie, particularly when the hero or main character is trying to escape. You root for that character to escape, and try to find with him or her the way out. Why not root for yourself, to find your way out? Some decisions I make automatically, if the sea is too way strong, it is letting you know by the swells to 40 feet, and I just know I can’t handle it, I might automatically get me and my surfboard out of the water and get back to the babes on the shore of Baywatch. It’s an automatic decision. There is no second guess or even a first guess. If I get an A, I am almost automatically happy with the best results. That is the letter I want to see and it starts with A. But other projected courses are not so automatic and require considerations based on the ability move freely. Even if we get to where we seem to want to be, there is some crossing over that is involved that isn’t automatic. My personal belief system about myself can be shrouded with inconsistencies and inaccuracies that hold me back and keep me from what should be automatically a fairly good choice to make. Since I just can’t get my better thought processes to the forefront right now, doesn’t mean I live by what I can’t get to yet. If I had real confidence, I would automatically take this chance and walk through the good opportunity. The traveling beliefs about myself that I put on active file, on automatic pilot, that check me away at the door of new territory that might contain the golden opportunities that will bring me home to happiness. It's as if I am skating with the hockey puck, nobody is there to check me, and I think what is going on, so I check myself against the boards. In my previously conceived notions of myself I haven’t considered other spectrums of my possible talents. I shroud my thinking. My one-dimensional ponderings haven’t considered that I may be multi-dimensional in my talents. I've blasted away at the whole rock. I have not gotten to the optimistic side of the fence yet. I haven’t told myself the whole story by just sticking with the negative. I’ve beclouded my own skyline. We haven’t exactly given scintillating reviews of ourselves to ourselves, further limiting fuller considerations of what might have yet been possible for me, jettisoning my own potentialities to a lesser form. I've giving myself a head start away from the better chances. Usually when someone says, you have a head start, it refers to advantages. But not the way we work things when negativity gets going first in our thinking. Not only do I not want to be famous I have in fact defamed myself. We have continually declared ourselves ineligible before anyone else has or before the game has even begun. Are you socially engaged to a level of satisfaction, intellectually engaged to a level of satisfaction, have you got the lantern on those thoughts that puts you more in the light?. Can you center your thoughts on something else other than the worst-case scenario and just deal with it if it does when it happens? For example as we take in the bad news, do we need to center our thoughts on it? Centering on good things now may even leave to a fullness of those good things now. A flower blooms centering in the sunlight. Free up your thinking to a more rounded view, towards yourself and you’re your circumstances, giving some credence to the brighter side of things, not that you have to stay captive to the optimistic, but just visit there and see what is going on in that neck of the woods, also trying to give some weight to all the viable ideas you could choose from, not just the negative, which you can probably put in the corner anyway for all the good it has done you in these ramparts. Going back to the example where I automatically get out of the surf if the waves are 40 feet high. But how about if I am facing waves that are 20 feet high? Even those waves are a bit high for my surfing ability but I am not sure. The decision isn’t automatic. Should I surf now or not? Right here is my rendezvous with freedom. This dance isn’t going to be with Ms. Automatic but with Ms. Freedom. Since the decision isn’t automatic, I will make a free choice. As I move away from the automatic I am moving into areas of freedom that contrast with my more automatic decisions. I am outside the friendly zone of automatic and I have to get used to dealing with the zone of maybe or maybe not. It isn’t much of a decision to grapple with to leave the 40-foot surf alone. But the surf I’m facing now offers more pros than cons but still some cons. I could get some relatively but not totally safe thrills on these waves, but my facility and experience in still more with 10 to 15 foot waves and this does represent an uncertain leap for me. When someone says to you, “ Don’t automatically assume." Consider that they might be right. How much and how often, even in the areas where we have a lot going for us, do we automatically assume maximum trust in our prior beliefs, approaches, expectations, and interests in somewhat erroneous fashion. How much should we be so automatic about without looking into freedoms play in the situation. I go out in the summer I automatically assume it will be at least 60 degrees. But what of the anomaly that has happened, that one day in the century when it’s 30 degrees in the summer. I just assumed that would never happen. We let these negative thoughts rent space in our head. But at what cost do they rent? Can we free up that space for some other tenants? Don’t totally rely on good bloodlines and circumstances. What good is the great horse with all the good bloodlines, and it never gets out of the barn for the race? Are you still married to the darkness of the day or can you finally break free and start to divorce yourself from those negative forces? Can you finally get on equal footing with freedom or at least get a foot in the proximal door of freedom’s domain, finally beginning to that first big step into its province. We have tapped danced around freedom for so long we don’t know where and who we are anymore, as we list for a place on the hierarchy of possibilities, we never had a meeting with freedoms demands and invitations, even as freedom knocked on our door not only once but again and again, nether while we dimmed the light on our remained sight of what could yet be. You don’t have to take on the full force of freedom you can take it in smaller doses. We don’t have to always have a grand meeting with freedom we can also meet freedom in her minutia, in her more minute form. Size up freedom to the situation. Not everything is at the level of détente.. You don’t have to be the leader of the free world to talk to anyone in this world, to talk to this girl, to jump in this nicely heated ocean for another soothing swim. Free yourself from the stifling and stilted worries that have got you swaggering like a ship in yet another storm of make believe. We can ride the wave of freedom but then we can also get off that wave. We have freedom to ride a wave and stay on its crest or get off it if we choose. Opportunity can be seen from that crest, that panoramic view, from that higher wave, where I have views of new and multiple landscapes, which might yet have widespread applications. Jason Gardner tried to catch that big wave to the NBA but he didn’t have a good camp for the NBA scouts and went back to college for another season. He didn’t surf that big wave to the NBA this time but there will be another chance, another wave for Jason. Another Golden Fleece may yet be found. He did get another view from that wave and then went back. By the way he was just MVP of a major preseason college tournament for his college team the Arizona Wildcats. Take some of your freedom pills in the morning with our vitamins. Freely have a freedom sandwich for lunch for a change instead of the usual tuna or turkey. And then take a relaxed walk along the highway of freedom afterwards, enjoy the sights, the price is right. Then take a drink from the cup of freedom, taste from its royal chalices. Ride those white horses that blend into the awesome sky, on those eternal mounts through those disappearing traces of freedom. Freedom can involve two-way exchanges of a mutual discourse. Or it could be freedom coming in a one-way direction charging towards us. Or freedom can be seen in others and watched by others. Freedom can come at us from the outside like a sudden raindrop. We might be observing someone else’s freedom in action. A good dialogue can consist of the free exchange of ideas. The freedom is there to immerse ourselves in new thoughts and ideas, now swimming again in the sea of change. The freedom is there to traverse into new arenas and ideas. There can be freedom to at least hear other voices. There can be a freedom of exchange with freedom cutting in two directions. For example, even attraction is something that happens freely. Someone could be attracted to you and give you that often-cited-non-verbal communication of interest. Even something as innocuous as this emerges freely from a vast group of the populace. It is freedom looking back at us. Not our freedom necessarily but we are observing someone else’s freedom. You don’t have control over how and where this will happen in the outer environment. It can happen on the subway while someone takes a peek over the paper they are reading. Or we can freely jump in the proverbial river for a swim, but the currents of the river can also freely sweep us down the shoreline at a pace of its own dynamics, our first agenda is then forgotten. We can subject ourselves to the winds, but the winds will go in the directions of their own choosing. The act of listening is a freedom, which is a two-way exchange. Take a rest by the brooks of freedom for a moment. Feel its presence relaxing the pressure from the stifling and oppressive heat from your smoldering tires in your fast race to nowhere. We have the freedom to endure but also the freedom to take a break and give it a break for now. There can be freedom to decrease the perception of jail time and start to get on the optimistic side of the fence or those bars. You might hate what something you are doing so much that you feel you are spending part of your day in jail. An example could be a course, which you find unappealing, for some this has been Calculus. You can decrease jail time by getting away from that which you despise to some extent. The redundancy or repetitiveness could be the cycle we need to break or shake ourselves free from. Freedom to pop the bubble when you are chewing gum or the freedom to chew gum in the first place. Acknowledge your potential. Potential doesn’t have to be the highest potential to be potential. I still own this potential even if it’s not the utmost potential. At least try for a good seat of those chariot races in Rome. You have potential, not that you could make it into that triumvirate with Augustus himself, but a seat in the Roman Senate might be within obtainable range with that good seat in the Coliseum, and a great view of those chariot races, even the one with Ben Hur. And you could have had a litany of followers and friends with you. But regardless you are in the year 2001 so you are a bit late for the race in ancient Rome. Where have you been? You missed all the fun. We might be handicapped by our circumstances and our own way of thinking. Things seem to be going bad or sour, I am feel I am almost lost at times. In fact, I am lost. But do I need to continually restrict myself for my seeming failures as a further punishment? When we are lost, we in fact should give ourselves more freedom and room to find our way amidst the chaos and ruins, and to rise above the ashes. Have more mercy on yourself as you are lost. Let’s get going with some freedom thoughts. The freedom to consider the some of the advantages and benefits. There is some advantage to having money in your pocket if you want to buy a salad for lunch or have the money to spontaneously take in a play. Rendezvous with freedom can be fun. Does freedom come with the package and the perks? What good is giving me this toy if I can’t open it and play with it? What good is giving me a Rolls Royce and telling me I can look at it only, I can’t drive it. You lent me a great book but I can only read the first 10 pages? If I have money the, can I actually spend it or can I wait and save for it a rainy millennium at 3000 A.D.? Some people have so much money that they will never spend because they couldn’t get back from their power trip that helped them get the money in the first place. I wouldn’t presently include Bill Gates in this thesis, he seems to have developed an outward view in part that doesn’t stop at enlightened self-interest because he has donated into the 100 millions already. He’s been on power trips but has come back. But must of us don’t have this problem to enjoy. The freedom to conceive and pursue some new plans or makes the givens active in our walkway. At least you can pursue your plans through to some sort of point of explanation. The situation might explain itself as you actually begin to go through it. You can still go further west young man. And then some freedom relates to the offering. What I have to offer first and foremost I have free for myself even if there are no takers. I still retain the ownership even if it is not taken. The intelligence you have is not only for this job it is more so for yourself of yourself. Don’t disparage your gifts just because they sometimes do not seem to be well received. Maybe the given situation is not a good fit. The beautiful blond is still beautiful for herself even if there are no takers in this new era where nobody wants a blond anymore, in this now absurd world. Barry Bonds, the reigning home run champ is offering his services as a hitter of home runs as a free agent after hitting an all time record 73 home runs in a season. The Mets are interested but no matter what team he ends up with he will still hit the ball with power. The Mets too are free to continue their bid or withdraw their bid. That home run ability will follow him wherever we goes, whoever the bidders are and what there price ultimately is. Again the concept of ownership, he is the one who owns the home run swing. The original all time home run champ, the Babe was asked how he felt about making more than the president of the country, he said I had a better year. There is somebody who knew what he had to offer. If I work for company Y, I could theoretically offer my services to any company from A through Z. You could offer your services elsewhere. If you have the good stuff, there will be other takers. Everybody will take Willie Mays in his prime for their team. And even if you aren’t the very best, that doesn’t mean you will not have other takers. What casts the longest shadow over your freedom? Is the shadow coming from the direction of yesterday or tomorrow, or from many sides within this very day? Worry itself can be like a die that casts its color on more than it’s original target or length and scope. Is it the future or the past or something right here and now. Maybe it is yesterday’s work or concerns that I am bringing forward that is becoming a mounting burden. The imprint of yesterday follows upon me, like those fallen leaves seemingly gone but still casting themselves as a shadow. Give yourself more slates to choose from and more voting power. And stop voting against your own choices. If you were running for office you wouldn’t even vote for yourself. Freedom could be freedom to selectively focus your time. Rather than making a one-time selection for the day, you can make several selections. You can keep the selection process open and ongoing for this day. Your preset agenda doesn’t rule everything. You’re on your way somewhere and you choose to stop at a yard sale, that is a free decision regarding a shift in time focus. Our your on your way across the country and you get off the highway to look at a small town, going into small shift in your time focus with freedom. Time focus is a free choice and you indeed might be facing the headwinds of a dearth of time for what you want to do. Likewise there can be shifts in task focus, priority focus all done in freedom. You can be free and still be skeptical, but with all the bad news, I am free to think about something else once in a while, a bit more optimistic towards my own interests at least some of the time. Not that we need to put a block on all other information that comes our way, but our own personal interests can become a personal swampland if we let ourselves get swamped by all this bad news flooding in on our thoughts. What does freedom mean to me at the outset of this endeavor? Freely I can forsake my prior plans, freely chosen, freely forsaken, I can apostatize from my previous course that was mandated by goals that became determinative. For any road your on there might be a time to consider getting off. You might miss your exit but even then you can ponder the turnaround. Or you might stay on this road never stopping for anything else, good or bad, so you’ll never know. Picture someone riding on a road cross country and then driving back and then repeating the same exact process again. They are constantly on the road, but have they ever seen the country really. Can they say they have seen the country? A larger step is not necessarily freer. I might just step right past the opportunity of the moment while pondering monumental goals that have low levels of certainty as to achievability or by simply not paying attention by thinking something involving this small and this easy a step could never lead to something that vaunted and that great while in fact it really can. We can run ahead of ourselves and miss where we want to go that way as well. Give yourself freedom to widen your tracks. If you are walking on a high wire or tightrope, your margin for error is significantly reduced and you’re taking excessive chances. You indeed have a better chance of falling. A trip can be a practical aid to a sense of freedom. Just being in an unfamiliar area can help us shake off the cobwebs. This unfamiliar area could just be going to a different restaurant. Any type variation of the routine can help. Then the trip as in tripping on something can also be a practical aid, if I find myself tripping over obstacles, I can feel okay with looking for a smoother pathway. Make your goals more of a moving target, etching them in less of a stone than granite, which just might leave me as well in the stone age or at least with Fred and Barney with the Flintstones. Although the Flintstones was a good show, we can move forward. Your goal could be made moving with regards to several variables, not only time. A moving goal is a type of a goal. It might be harder to pinpoint on a moving target but it gives you more overall permission and slack towards your goals and with more longitude and latitude to deal with, it helps obviate against a false sense of security, of a narrow landing strip just for me, allowing for multiple ranges and outcomes which can still take me there. I think I need to land here with this and there are multiple landing strips and these also involve others and the whole scene is a lot roomier than you could ever imagine as far as finding good landing points. And in fact you are in motion, so why correlate that with a standstill target goal especially since that target is more than likely a product of guess work. Write your plans in pencil or erasable ink and you’ll probably have more of a chance to get a better sketch if you can revise as you go along. The eraser relates to the closed door. If things have been that bad, you might as well erase everything and close all those doors. Get to a brand new page in your life. We can relate the idea of a moving target to an expansion of any variable that relates to the matter at hand. For example, the girl wants to date someone between the ages of 20 and 30. She could expand this variable to the ages of 19 to 31. She will only date someone who is making 100,000 a year. She could look expand to the idea of someone who seems to have the potential for 100,000 a year in her estimation. So she is in the same situation, looking for a date but she has expanded on two variables relevant to her thinking. Also realize, and this is key, that to move or change variables we may need to subject them to estimation. Estimation is the key word we are not dealing with exact information so we have to come into this realm with estimates. I might have my cornerstone thinking or rock solid ideas, thoughts and approaches but from there I am still estimating. An expanding universe according to scientists is moving outward. So we can move our variables outward in freedom. We can put some sort of motion or rotation to a given variable and this could include compression of the variable to lessen the scope. She wanted to date someone between the ages of 20 and 30, so she makes it 23 to 28. I estimate I can run 20 miles. I am starting to run and at mile ten I soon realize I am already very tired, so I can reduce my estimate distance for this run while in transit to 15 miles and move my variable that way. Bad estimates don’t help us. I could look at a 400 hundred-page book, and I say I’m going to read this in one sitting. Does this really help me? I mean I can’t read the 400 pages in this one sitting, I just don’t have enough available daylight, and I’m going to set myself up to feel bad about the experience. This overestimation of what I can do is not helpful to my attitude in moving forward in freedom. As we try to move our variable within estimable ranges, it is better to try and gauge with the more realistic estimates. An underestimation of our abilities can also get us in trouble later on. I am playing A ball, and I soon realize I should be in the major leagues. I have sold myself short on some very real and tangible capabilities. Historically, some big estimates have been wrong. It was estimated that the world was flat and the sun revolved around the earth. It was estimated that the dinosaurs were extinct but we learned otherwise in the movie Jurassic Park. First of course is the realization that you are dealing with estimates, and you then can check on these estimates as being estimates. These estimates should have been put on watch. Then realize that these estimates as well are put on automatic like we have already done with beliefs and facts we have learned. But this time we are only dealing with either good or not so good estimates, which we are also putting on automatic. It’s easier to deal with things that way, but we might do better if we walk into the freedom of the situation and change our estimates in freedom as further evidence presents itself as we make our run down the coast. Since these are only estimates, I may need to change my estimates. I am estimating it is a good day for a hike in the sun. I am seeking rain clouds approaching and while they may not get here, they are moving in this direction towards the location of the hike and I might need to change my estimate based on what’s coming through. Since we are dealing with estimates, we want to keep those estimates dancing with freedom and the presenting realities as we can best ascertain what they are. The variable of time that we have is something that we tend to overestimate. You say you have plenty of time to read this book. But if I leave its completion to the year 2050, there may not be a shift in the actual landscape I am on but there might and will be tectonic shifts in your personal landscape. The personal ground you are standing on will have moved in significant ways. So for example you could read book straight through or read parts of it and pick it up at a later date or time. Or even conclude by reading only part of the book. Where is that missing part that gap that I must fill in? What is the part I have to have and what are the parts I can leave out, and make variable or keep it as variable. Do I have to have a girl with brown eyes, could I accept someone with blue eyes thereby leaving out the variable of the brown eyes? If I absolutely have to have a natural blond, I can keep this as an unchanging variable and then make eye color variable. She can have green, brown, blue, or hazel eyes. You could put anger in the corner of your thinking, just to give room for something else to emerge in your mind. We might continue to be mad, but we don’t have to make it central to our thinking and concerns. So leave your anger in the corner and come out for the next bell. Give it another round.

You might have convinced yourself that this is how things should be, to help get yourself moving towards something, but a lot can change before that last flicker of light during even a day. The should be idea can get you as lost as anything, it should be this way, and should happen this way. Lot’s of what should be isn’t therefore I am completely lost. I am going to have to find my way around without the should be. There should be a street light in this forest I’m lost in at night, but there isn’t. That which tends towards something is beginning to borrow into that territory, and we might eventually get there totally. What is it that you are dealing with now that seems to borrow from new territory that if you ever got there in its totality would be what your dream is? Maybe the territory you should have been in at the first place. It something is starting to exhibit this in part, it may soon fully exhibit this in full if you get there. Anything that sheds some light portends to freedom. Freedom and might have several more aces to throw at you, so we need to account for the element of surprise in our thinking. The reigning lights of freedom have their own ideas. There are many streams to the brooks of freedom. Say goodbye to yesterday first, breath freedom into the new day, and share in its morning light. How can we distinguish our way if we don’t allow ourselves to take in more than one view beyond this view, which is, the only one I believe in? Can I rekindle another candle? Can I at least get another angle on this? Why fight against the Napoleons of tomorrow today? I am looking at calm seas for now. Enjoy the view while it lasts. Just because I’m moving faster, seeing it more quickly doesn’t mean I’m freer. Freedom could just as well be found in the stillness, where and when I have the space to ponder. A slower pace could also be free. More measured steps can be free steps as well. I might step too quickly into what amounts to quicksand anyway. For example, I get to a pristine body of water, so clear and perfect and a seeming invitation for a swim. But then I stop for a look and I see some menacing snakes in that water, maybe I shouldn’t jump right in, maybe it was good I stopped and looked. It was the clearness of the water that let me see them. And most important, is that freedom might involve crossing a plane. Some plane will be crossed with freedom, maybe a smaller plane for you or even a greater plane for me like across from the great plains of Africa to Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Maybe the outer plane I need to cross is self-forgiveness into new light. And this indeed might even be an outer plane, not something close by. I spoke to Bart, who said in our conversation on the train ten years after his high school football career, that he missed the field goal attempt that would have won the city football championship as time ran out on the game. I think there were 3 seconds left in the game. This single attempt was just wide of the uprights from about 35 yards away. This experience of loss affected his play even in college and it was half of this 45 minute on the train conversation 10 years later. I saw somebody who had seen him at a Holy Cross high school reunion talking to him a year or so later and he still spoke of the missed field goal. He had yet to cross for him what was now an outer plane on the outer and far reaches of self-forgiveness for losing the city championship in his mind. He said the field goal just missed, it was just wide. He felt he had let down his teammates who had worked towards this goal all year long and this is what hurt most. What if those goalposts where somehow wider for Bart, if only for a moment, on that football field of yesterday? For that one moment, that one kick that just didn’t make it, an attempt which remained with him so long afterwards, leaving him with cloudy instead of clear thoughts on his whole high school experience. As the kick went wide, the city championship was lost as those uprights were missed or just weren’t found in that moment, Bart could have come to terms then and crossed into the plane of self-forgiveness then. But as each year went by and the more opportunities for self forgiveness passed him by, that self forgiveness became more and more on the outer plane, that which if he should cross now it would be more on the far reaches, the furthest most planes, where he could finally achieve that self forgiveness that he never gave himself. That climb to forgiveness that Bart could make has increased with the years. We have listened to Bart over the years but he still hasn’t forgiven himself. We are into a new century. Bart can only get to Mt. Kilimanjaro by himself now crossing those great plains of Africa with freedom. He has to find and follow the freedom to get to that place of forgiveness himself. So, what is this golden plane that we might cross in freedom? What plane haven’t I crossed with and by my own free will? I can ponder and begin to see that golden plane, whether is close or beyond, I’m beginning to see. Crossing those final planes with freedom into the new light, under that last remaining visage of hope, before every remaining opportunity with freedom before me, disappears without a trace, and I’ve had my last dance with freedoms chance

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