FREEDOM 

Part 2

Please read Part 1 first.

 It seems we all tend to live in patterns. Our desires and wishes for our life determine the patterns, and these tend to change with our changing circumstances. Why is that? Some reasons are more obvious, and others are more hidden and harder to get at. We all want to think we are free, and would deny anything to the contrary. I lived most of my life as a choice in a life course I wanted…However, my hours were plotted over the years in a schedule made by others, and my personal life revolved around work hours. All of this revolved around my salary that financed my lifestyle. Gradually, oh so gradually, I was being shaped to voluntarily pour myself into a tunnel that would end up possibly where I didn’t want to go.   A phrase keeps coming to mind: Oh, what a tangled web we weave when once we practice to deceive…Taking a cue from myself, what is the deception here? Did we do this to ourselves? Or did we unconsciously “fit” ourselves to a prescribed pattern, present in our reality even way before we were born and that we accepted as a “Given or the way it is”. Over the years I have had the feeling grow that people ought to be able to live on what they love to do, and this knowing within should have given me a clue to this ultimate deception.   Early in my life, I had been in love with art…drawing, painting, stories and books about Artists and their paintings in history, as well as questions about how the body worked and the mysteries of the brain and how the mind worked, about how physical and mental health solutions came about, ie. Art and Science vied for prominence…A Judge who lived behind me said “Young lady, be practical. Go to Nursing School, and later get into Art”…None of my teachers advised otherwise. Art was far removed from my personal environment, but I lived near a University Medical Center, and had Doctors and Nurses in my neighborhood, for whom I babysat…So, guess what won out?   Lila Bennett