What makes you feel free? [Part one]
Oh, hi friends!
What an incredible day.
Yesterday, I asked all of you what makes you feel free?
Here are some of your first responses—I’ll keep publishing these through the end of the week, so reply back to me anytime. I’d love to know what makes you feel free.
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I feel free when I am sitting on the beach listening to the waves crash onto the shore. I also feel freedom when I am driving on a road trip and listening to the perfect playlist. — Michelle in Cincinnati
Surfing on the backs of subway trains makes me feel free! — Hannah in Brooklyn
While I’ve been living in Ireland for the past 18 years, I grew up in a small town on the Mendocino coast in northern California that is pretty much heaven on earth. Our family home is a few miles up a dirt road in the redwoods, and so freedom for me is my morning run down that road, listening to the sea lions bark down at the coast, and being in a place without cell signal for two weeks. — Torry in Ireland
I feel free when I can wind down enough to take a nap. As someone with OCD and anxiety, it takes A LOT to get there, but it means that I have closed enough loops and reset enough things to zero that my brain can safely go wherever it wants to. I also feel this way when I’m crafting. Mostly knitting or quilting because I’m good enough not to have to constantly think about what I’m doing. — Niki
Going to bed without setting an alarm because I have no agenda the next day. Leaving work early on an afternoon/evening when I have no plans and can just bum around the city (again, with no agenda). Snow days. Open bars. — Stacey in Brooklyn
When I feel most free: when I do the things that are most authentically me; where I get to create, to build, to be purely in the moment of that process. For me, that’s playing music, building something/fixing something; art/DIY—especially something for someone. — Meg in Portland, Oregon
I feel most free when I am in the water. Ideally, far from land such as in the ocean or in the lake swimming, paddle boarding or doing some water activity. At that moment nobody can get in touch with you by phone and you are free just to spend time with your thoughts or whoever you are with. — Lauren in Manhattan
Traveling on foot with no specific destination in mind, attending a music festival solo, final rest at the end of yoga, swimming in the ocean, a clean apartment, and the first day of a hard-earned vacation. — Beth in Brooklyn
Sadly, the feeling of freedom is illusory. At best it is like temporary amnesia: for a brief time, consciously or not, we are able to hide "before" and "after" and behave as if the present moment were all and there were no postponed deadlines or looming obligations. — Richard on the Upper West Side, who also shared these:
And then there's Prince Hal [from Shakespeare Henry IV, Part 1]
If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work;
But when they seldom come, they wish'd for come,
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.
And then there's Nina:
Listen to her “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free." You're gonna love it.
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Thanks, as always, for reading.
Love, Kara