Freedom.

In these last few months since India I have felt more free than ever before, like there is more air in my chest and I could take off and fly to anywhere and do anything, at any time, for any reason

Directly related to my singleness, I am thinking... last time I graduated from college I was in a relationship, and a good one at that - but I didn't feel this lightness of being that comes from being unattached.

This is a new freedom, a new hope, a new lightness

And I could become addicted to this, especially after spending hours on those buses and trains halfway across the world, thinking how much I'd like to take off on a treck by myself...

Love is very nice, closeness is very nice, physical touch is very nice, but I wonder how much this present lightness becomes weighted with each attachment I make or maintain -

Do we become less free as we become entertwined more with others? Can we have closeness and lightness at the same time, or are they mutually exclusive? How long will I feel this light? Does the light change and shift, how many colors of freedom are there, and how many kinds of love for others and self are there? It would seem infinite

Obviously we need others, we love and adore our time with others, so I am not suggesting to myself that I should become a loner, but I am relishing this feeling

This lightness

Today as I walk I feel a spring in my step

And I give thanks for my health, my youth, my life and breath, and I know I want to get out there, and roam the earth a bit more before my time comes

To be in India on another bus, the breeze blowing the curtain in my face, green fields blurring before me, flashes of color and wooden carts of fluffy cotton sacks, it is harvest time in these pregnant fields

And so free, this is so free

And how lucky, how fortunate, how on earth was I born this free, it feels wrong when I see the women this bus is passing by, working the fields in the hot sun in bare feet

As I watch a young patient paralyzed before me, I know I must follow this lightness of being, and not settle until my wings are tired of flying, or they too are paralyzed

And I will search for that elixer that allows freedom to mix with closeness, so that neither weights the other; and know that love exists in many shades.