MY WEEKLY BLOG<\/p>\n
NOTHING LEFT TO\u00a0LOSE<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the Fourth of\u00a0July, our country\u2019s 245th anniversary of independence and separation from the British Empire. It seems only right to dedicate my blog this week to \u201cfreedom,\u201d but I don\u2019t want to revert to the usual clich\u00e9s and stale definitions. The word is far reaching with so many different interpretations, it deserves much more than a perfunctory and simplistic reference. So I thought I\u2019d look into some contemporary examples of this elusive and powerful word.<\/p>\n
What initially comes\u00a0to mind is the lyric in Janis Joplin\u2019s hit song. Me and Bobby McGee:: \u201cFreedom\u2019s just another word for nothing left to lose.\u201d<\/p>\n
Janis died a few\u00a0days after recording the song, fleeing her body and demonstrating the lyrics\u00a0literally, even though she didn\u2019t write them. A little known fact is that the\u00a0song, part of her posthumous album \u201cPearl,\u201d was written by Kris Kristopherson\u00a0and Fred Foster about a studio secretary, Barbara McKee, but they had misheard\u00a0her name.<\/p>\n
We have such\u00a0programmed and varied ideas about what freedom means. Some people see it as\u00a0speaking up while others see it as staying quiet without the need to defend\u00a0oneself. Some people see it as an unlimited bank account, the ability to buy\u00a0whatever they want to have and go wherever they want to go. Others see it as\u00a0giving up everything and having no ties or obligations. The Hindu word
\u201cSanyasin\u201d refers to someone who renounces the world and abandons all claims to\u00a0society and family. A Sanyasin wears orange, the color that represents spirituality\u00a0in that culture, and lives deliberately separated from society at large.<\/p>\n
Buddhist nun Pema\u00a0says, \u201cThis moving away from comfort and security, this stepping out into what\u00a0is unknown, uncharted and shaky \u2013 that\u2019s called liberation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jim Morrison, said, \u201cThe most important\u00a0kind of freedom is to be what you really are. There can’t be any\u00a0large-scale revolution until there’s a personal revolution, on an individual\u00a0level. It’s got to happen inside first.\u201d<\/p>\n
Poet Laureate, Toni Morrison, said, \u201cYou wanna fly,\u00a0you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.\u201d<\/p>\n
I see wisdom in all of these definitions, I don\u2019t\u00a0see one as any truer than another, so I\u2019m exercising my personal freedom by\u00a0defining the word on my own terms, the way I see it and the way I don\u2019t. For\u00a0me, it isn’t about stepping out of my comfort zone because my athletic
background was all about physical discomfort and learning to tolerate pain and\u00a0loneliness. I\u2019ve had enough of that. I don’t feel the
need to give up things and separate myself from the secular world. Rather, I\u00a0feel free when I am satisfied with what I have, when I live in the world the\u00a0way I want to and adopt a lifestyle that makes me happy and encourages an open\u00a0heart and mind. For me, being free means\u00a0that I get to choose what I do, who I allow into my inner circle, what I eat,\u00a0what and whom I listen to and how I make my living. It isn\u2019t about clinging to\u00a0people or things. I\u2019m talking about standing up for who I am are, loosening my\u00a0grip on the idea of perfection and approving of myself exactly as I am.<\/p>\n
I see freedom as a mental and spiritual\u00a0concept that means letting go of negative thinking and painful stories that\u00a0aren\u2019t real. It\u2019s a state of mind where I can unburden my heart and do the\u00a0things that make sense to me. We are born free, but we have to practice it in\u00a0order to live it. When we find the courage to figure out who we are, what
matters to us, and how best we can gracefully embody the truth about ourselves, Then we are free to simply be.<\/p>\n
What does freedom mean to you?<\/p>\n
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MY WEEKLY BLOG NOTHING LEFT TO\u00a0LOSE It\u2019s the Fourth of\u00a0July, our country\u2019s 245th anniversary of independence and separation from the British Empire. It seems only right to dedicate my blog this week to \u201cfreedom,\u201d but I don\u2019t want to revert to the usual clich\u00e9s and stale definitions. The word is far reaching with so many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1945,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}