Freedom

Freedom

        I think we all have our own Ideas about what freedom is, do you know what freedom is to you? To me it's being able to do what I want and decide how I think. I am free to challenge...
                                                 the preconceived notions that I have been "hard wired " with. I wonder why I think about the things I do. Where do my thoughts come from, have I made my own decisions to think the way I would choose to, or is some phantom of my childhood exerting its ere sub-conscious control over

    We all grow up with a certain amount of pressure to accept the things our parents and society wish us to concede to. But have you ever thought to wonder where/when those ideas were forged, from what seemingly indestructible yet inescapable material we find ourselves tangled up in for our entire lives. 

    Have you ever found yourself in conflict over the way you react to some external stimulus and wonder "where did that come from". I know I have. For example someone cuts me off in traffic and I, an up till now, happy person, get extremely aggravated and expresses that frustration with a hand gesture my mother may have had strong reservations against but that I managed to pick up from somewhere none the less. Then a few minuets later I see that same vehicle parked on the curb at the local hospital emergency room with both doors open wide. Well my feeling about the injustice of being cut off somehow diminishes and I may even feel a little bit ashamed or at least a little sympathetic. You see the situation remains the same but my prospective has changed. That anger looses it's foothold and it just kind of melts away.

       I haven't written all this to convince you to change yourself or those around you. I am just explaining my prospective. I usually find that when I'm getting angry, usually, I'm missing something. There is some little trick or tidbit I'm just not getting through my unusually thick skull. Especially when I have seen the same task , that I am working on, accomplished with relative ease and grace by someone who would seem, in my opinion, to have no right to be able to do so. Like the old guy who consistently works circles around a younger more physically fit young guy. It's in the how it's done not the task itself.

    My challenge to myself is to consider why I think the way I do, and make a conscious choice about my thought process. I can do this by making observations of myself from as objective a standpoint as possible and asking myself where that idea is coming from. Then choosing to reinforce it or disregard it.

Intentional Communities Website : provides information on the intentional communities movement including a searchable Communities Directory and hundreds of articles on community. Published by the FIC.