In Pursuit Of Freedom

Me for 24 years minus a few here and there, freedom within my soul and freedom within the worlds I found myself. Freedom. Something so many in this world have no concept of because they have never experienced it, something that people the world over crave, need, hope for. Freedom.

For as long as I can remember Freedom was the one thing I sought for and yet it was continually evasive as if it were an aura of mist on the horizon. I stopped looking for it on that horizon a long time ago, losing hope of ever holding it within my hands, feeling it or tasting it. It evaded me continually and as you chase those dreams of freedom you tire, you grow weary and slowly stop reaching for it on the horizon. Instead to save emotional resources you look within, you feel the freedom within your being.

As you close your eyes Freedom is there before you, close enough to touch, you can smell it, taste it on your tongue, it is with you. Freedom like a vision, a fantasy of all that can be, a fairytale within your heart that you hold onto until the horizon comes closer.

My vision started when I was a child, being tortured with tribulations from which the scars I still carry both in my soul and on my body. To stop the tears from running down my cheeks I shut my eyes really really tight, so tight they hurt but made colours appear on my eyelids. Those colours turned into a fairy tale of peace, happiness and safety.

As I looked into the colours calm would flow through my body and I would leave it. Stepping through like Alice in Wonderland I entered the most beautiful place that had butterflies kissing my nose, daisies everywhere I looked, tall trees with cute birds twittering, the sound of the ocean and ice-cream. Ah that ice-cream was the best ever! It never melted on my clothes and no adults could see me eating it. As my body was being hurt my mind was safe, I didn’t hear what the adults said to me, I didn’t feel what they did, no adults could hurt me in my wonderland.

That wonderland was my freedom. When I was scared, I was hurt or being hurt I would close my eyes and go back there. My freedom, one that I still visit often. I never knew the difference, to me that freedom was always real and what it was all about. Freedom, real freedom, I could never imagine, I never truly knew what it would mean to be free.

Not until now.

Now I know what true real life freedom is and hold both my internal and external freedoms within my arms. I’ve tasted the horizon, seen the truth that lies there and know that no matter what, in order to be free, you have to look first within yourself in order to recognise the physical one. You will never know or experience true freedom in life until you experience it within your soul.

It lies within each of us, right there inside you, inside me and inside life.

No matter what we face in this life that freedom is always within us, right there waiting for you to close your eyes and feel it. It’s the secret to life, it is what gets the kids in Africa through cold mornings in tin shacks, it’s what gets terror victims through the horrors that replay before their eyes, it’s what gets adults through the roughest times.