The most cherished of all the fundamentals, I think, is freedom, independence, liberty. An inherent urge-live 24/7 is the freedom to be, to do and above all to feel free. Nothing is more sacrosanct, prized and precious than the fulfillment of latent burning for space-our very own, personal space, a sacred zone where soul revels in undefined joy. The independence of being and living, breathing free as a spiritual being does not really ever crave to be expressed. It’s the feeling of unfetteredness which makes us feel complete, total, not-lacking in anything. An infant wants to break free off any restrictions despite his love for huggy care and comfort the moment he grows enough to resist; a child wants to have all the freedom to play or do whatever he wants to do as much as he can without being told to do this or that; an adolescent hates to be stopped from going somewhere or asked to explain the why of an action in spite of the fact that he craves for the security and comfort of encompassing human relations. As we grow old, I feel, the urge to freedom, the thirst for independence grows and does not lessen. It’s but natural to find older people more vulnerable to hurts by being unnecessarily cajoled to do something or being thwarted from doing another. The need to be economically empowered is also motivated by the desire to break free while fulfilling the responsibilities we owe to family, clan.
With passage of time the awareness of our own space gets more defined and inexpressible boundaries get drawn more in the mind of course. Somewhere we know clearly 'thus far and no farther' and somewhere our actions, reactions, attitudes speak more loudly than any words ever could how much access is allowed to the innermost recesses of our heart to all the outsiders coz when it comes to gauging the impact of feel-free concept on our psyche, more often than not all the human beings we love so deeply, intensely, with all our heart become the people outside our special space the boundaries of which are fathomable only by us. And in our sway of being free- thinking-individuals we don't mind becoming (involuntarily, for sure) curt, discourteous or cutting other person short while silently we are busy drawing the lines!
All our lives are woven around building relationships as a mother, father, sister or brother and later as husband or wife. Throughout our life, the threads of kindredness keep weaving silently friendships, affairs, bonds of emotional attachments and we love it all abundantly, give us feeling of totality, completion at least from our own perspective we crave for the ultimate ! Somewhere uncompromisingly we are committed only to our deep seated sense of freedom and privacy of space and we cannot bear the brunt of any rude, harsh comment or an undesirable sarcasm, an unwelcome third- party-intrusion howsoever unwittingly and un-deliberated.
No wonder that the sacred space of ours is secret space, too to which only we ourselves have an access password. And that space means all the freedom we never feel need to define. We can take anything in a stride except the intrusion in our sanctum sanctorum where the deity of liberty resides and we are the guardian angels of this-the most sacred space of ours which gives meaning to our very being.
Thought provoking.
ReplyDeleteMaybe that is why we are all loners at heart. We never let go and share the password with anybody. But we also have rare moments when we take the intruder by hand for the guided tour of the innerself pointing to the obvious and conveniently forgetting to `show' what lies behind the curtains !