IWNHM/IWNHO: Freedom/Adulting

I don’t feel like an adult. Maybe now?

When I was young, I lusted after the freedom that would come with being an adult. In some ways, it feels like my generation has never completely grown up. Maybe holding onto that inner child isn’t such a bad thing. But it feels like there was a box that didn’t get checked. I kept waiting for some clear line of demarcation that never came. I do all of the adultish things: hold down a job and fret about the gutters and have opinions on legislative policy. And this place comes with a freedom of sorts; one that is girdled with routine, structure, cycles, institutional cohesion. Maybe this is something that humans crave, a carefully curated freedom. What does that real freedom look like?

There is really nothing you must be. And there is nothing you must do.
There is really nothing you must have. And there is nothing you must know.
There is really nothing you must become.
However. It helps to understand that fire burns, and when it rains,
the earth gets wet.

-Zen proverb

It is not good to be alone
It is not good to walk away from the future
into the long morning of primitive hands
I moved through the shepherds and the sheep
I moved past the lovers and the friends
I carry no knife and hold no provisions
I have a horse and wild berries and the wind...

– From, “Southern Cross”