Ever feel like you’re jumping as high as you can to reach that juicy delicious carrot dangling in front of you, but someone somewhere is laughing and yanking it back at the last second? The defeatist perspective maybe, but when I was a kid, before the internet and computers, when you had to use your telephone or write a letter to communicate with someone who didn’t live in your neighborhood (and that wasn’t very long ago, I’m only 29) I would write letters to cousins, friends, grandparents, simply because I liked to write. I would neatly address the envelope, seal it, cover it with cute colorful stickers, and then give it to my mother.
“I’ll mail it tomorrow,” she would say, but I always had that feeling in the pit of my stomach which made me feel like a little green goblin with insomnia that'd finally fallen asleep under a nice wooden bridge, only to be abruptly awoken by trampling feet. Angry, frustrated, and defensive the goblin urged me to shout “WHY DON’T I BELIEVE YOU, JUST MAIL IT, IT'S NOT THAT DAMN HARD!”
But the green goblin never managed to escape, and instead slightly hopeful I would skip off, daydreaming of some far off fantasy land. My mother would think it was cute and put the letter on top of the fridge, it wasn't really her biggest concern, she always had bigger things to worry about. Besides, I was just a little girl who'd probably forget all about it, and she would try to remember to get around to it...eventually.
Much to my dismay, but not to my surprise, several months later I would find it, sitting there covered in dust amongst a pile of miscellaneous papers and other items, un-read. I would open it, knowing it was now out-dated, the words left stranded to shrivel like a saturated sponge tossed into the hottest of deserts. I would mourn the death of those words which never got to live and were now irrelevant, reading the letter my soul would lose a little light, exhaled in an exhausted sigh. I guess the person this letter was intended for will never know I was thinking about them, they’ll never know the story I so carefully crafted about that day at school. Why couldn’t she just mail it? Most times I wouldn’t say anything, and if I did it was a small whiney whimper, said with the voice of a sadly defeated eight year old, “I thought you said you were going to mail it?”
Nonchalantly, like it wasn’t that big of a deal, she would respond “sorry honey I completely forgot, write another one and I’ll be sure to send it out this time, I promise!”
Yeah right, it was useless, why was it so impossible to get a stamp? You could buy cigarettes but you couldn’t pick up some stamps? In these times I gained my strength from knowing the day would come when I was no longer forced to depend on her, or anyone for that matter. But then I grew up, and into a real “career” and I realized…wait…now I'm depending on my employer...for my pay cheque, my car, my rent, my vacation, damn it! Who tricked me!
Are we ever really free? I guess free is a state of mind…a feeling of joy, passion, love, purpose…how you feel when you’re cruising down the highway, away from the world which picks at you, away from the world which demands of you, headed towards the mountains, music cranked, wind in your hair, arm stretched out the window floating like ocean waves in the wind. Or when you’re laying beside the love of your life, contently enjoying a moment on a beautiful sunny day as you gently sway in a backyard hammock, staring at the clouds in the sky and commenting on the way they look as they peek through the branches of the trees…these things make me smile, and no one can dangle those feelings in front of me, no one. That’s what makes me free…
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