Freedom

In school there were few subjects I really hated, but somehow physics ended up being one of them. Therefore when my husband (who is a railway engineer) starts talking about anything too techy, my brain instantly wants to shut off. The other night, however, we ended up talking about the «degree of freedom» which apparently is a thing in physics 😉 I even looked it up: 

«In physics, the degrees of freedom (DOF) of a mechanical system is the number of independent parameters that define its configuration or state.» (Wikipedia) Please bear with me 😉 So in a nutshell, what I took away from the article is the question: in which directions is a body able to move? (Physicists, don’t hate me for this rather naive summary…)

My body wants to be moving in quite a lot of directions these days – and the pandemic is definitely not helping. It wants to go see my family as often as I wish to without any restrictions or tests to be taken. It wants to have dinner at a restaurant with a circle of friends. It wants to travel the world and plan a huge birthday party. It wants all these things, especially because they are out of reach for the most part. At the same time, it wants to stay home and enjoy some peace and quiet without fear of missing out. It wants to be allowed to plan a big birthday party and then NOT do it. It wants to have a choice. This is what freedom boils down to: having a choice. Take this away from me and I’ll start obsessing about anything I cannot have these days – no matter whether I truly need it right now or not. Whenever I feel boxed it, I get incredibly restless and irritable. 

What I tend to forget with all the mess we currently are in is that in the end freedom starts in our heads. There are so many decisions we take every day – only few of them consciously. And there are so many areas in our lives where we do not even realize we do have a choice. In a wonderful conversation last year in October, my friend Pia once reminded me of «the freedom to think anything» (a quote from the book «Change Altitude» by Bertrand Piccard). This made me realize how much we are sometimes standing in our own way and how important it is to find the right altitude of flight to frame the meaningful questions in life. 

I had totally forgotten about this book. Then recently, someone important in my life asked me: «What would you do if you weren’t afraid?» And I was very hesitant to answer. In my head, in order to be truly free, I need to let go of my fears – which is quite a hard thing to do. My counterpart sensed my hesitation and said something along the lines of: «You mean if you start thinking about what you need to be free, it is like going on a highway without knowing if you’ll ever come back?» Yes, she nailed it. That is scary. What if I start thinking about spending months away from my family in a yoga retreat in India? What if I realize I want to move to another country? What if I realize I am just not happy the way things are? Am I going to hurt somebody? So whenever this feeling of inquietness arises, I usually numb it down by taking on new projects, by keeping myself busy somehow. I never dared to really sit down and write down what I would do or look for if I didn’t fear rejection, economic trouble, disappointing my family or anything else. But this time I did take the time to make that list. 

Here are some aspects of what freedom looks like to me:

• Finding stillness whenever I need it. (Silence is really one of the things I miss the most when I am with the kids…).
• Experiencing joy at work and not being forced to work just for the money. Essentially the question I keep asking myself is: Would I choose to do what I do for a living even if it didn’t bring in any money? (And of course my heart goes out to anyone who is currently not in a position to carry out their jobs due to the pandemic or who has been hit economically in the past months. Please reach out if you need a friendly ear!)
• Being able to change the course of my life within a couple of months. (There are many aspects of my life where I neither want nor am able to do this, but I am p.ex. deliberately running my business in a way I am able to shut it down within 3 to 6 months if I want to.)
• Not being addicted to anything (screens, food, fame, you name it…)
• Choosing to be in my marriage every day as opposed to just following suit (knowing that I think I would somehow manage to take care of my kids on my own if I had to).
• Allowing myself to feel everything without judging or numbing myself. 
• Letting trust and intuition guide my every decision (especially applicable, but not only limited to raising my children). 

The list goes on and on, but essentially I realized there are only a few things on this list where I really don’t have a choice right now (yes, I’d really love to go on a yoga retreat somewhere warm and sunny for a couple of weeks!!). For many of the other aspects I either have made significant progress or I never dared to ask for them in the first place (like moving to another country with my family and working from there for a while). The list definitely sparked many interesting conversations at home and with friends, and although I did leave the house in order to write down my thoughts, I eventually managed to find my way back home 🙂

I highly encourage you to put in writing what freedom means to you. Where do you feel boxed in right now? Do you really not have a choice or are you fighting some sort of resistance that only lives within yourself? What do you need in order to feel truly free (if this is a feeling that you value)? In which directions would you like to be able to move? What would you do if you weren’t afraid? What is your perfect setup in order to «neither underconstrain nor overconstrain» yourself, quoting again the physics article mentioned above? Is there any part of your life where you feel like you could change something for the better – despite all the constraints we are experiencing these days?

Are there situations in your day-to-day life where you can choose to act out of love instead of fear (just like my dear friend Kristina Walcker-Mayer from Nuri whose interview is really worth listening to)? I am sure we all can detect many moments where we still do have a choice – if we choose to move our focus and energy away from what we cannot change for now. 


Take care!

Tanja