Are you the inmate and the warden?

What people don't tell you about living in alignment is that it fucking sucks sometimes.

I walked past the expansive playground in my neighborhood: swings, jungle gyms, free play areas. A kid, three years old, maybe four, bellowed inconsolably as he clung to the open park gate with his left arm and held tight to a favorite book with his right. His parents were seven feet away watching him as they sat on a bench inside, presumably waiting for him to calm down and join them. What was making him cry? He wasn’t alone or lost. He wasn’t hurt. The gate he clung to was open. The child could roam as he wished. He was safe, free, with his favorite toy, and in a place of opportunity and fun. But he wailed and clung to the gate like it was his only hope.

As I continued my walk to the pier, I thought about the child. It was a clear, blue-sky spring day, just warm enough for a light jacket, the kind of day New Englanders didn’t take for granted.

I sat down on one of the black, iron benches facing the reflective undulations of the harbor and let my emotions flow. It was a new practice to let them wash over me, to observe what I felt. Sad. Ok. Why are you sad? Soft, slow ripples migrated across the surface of the water. Grief. I was grieving the loss of things and people that I was saying no to. I was grieving the loss of cute gestures, of shared experiences, of a hoped for future, and the possibilities I had imagined.

My own choice was the source of my grieving, and for a second that made my head spin. How could I be so sad about something I was actively choosing? It was counterintuitive. Then I remembered other times with conflicting emotions, how those existed simultaneously too and also hadn’t made sense. This was being human. It didn’t have to make sense.

Still, it surprised me. I was feeling the pain of becoming. You have to pay to level up. People don't really talk about it. They’ll tell you about extra gym sessions, earlier wake-ups, or giving up alcohol, but people don’t talk about the humans you leave behind, the loss you choose to live with so that you can be who you were meant to be. To help myself, I thought about what I would gain if I gave up in the face of my grief, if I didn’t continue to make this new choice-- more of the same, the same pain, the same lesser life I already knew. Nope. Not turning around.

I opened my arms wide to the expanse of the harbor, to the pain of my own becoming. Another oddity, this intentional opening up to receive in the midst of pain, another one I was practicing. So be it. I accept. I choose this.

When you make new choices to honor who you are and what you want out of life, to honor the things you truly believe in, perhaps a future not yet realized but hoped for, there is a severing, a death, a loss, and thus a grieving.

I didn't see mine coming. Not really. Yes, I chose consciously. Yes, I knew the days of chasing, the days of coming in second place even to myself, were no more, and I knew that may mean I would have to say goodbye to some people, but I didn’t see the loss or severing within myself coming.

There was a piece of me that I was saying goodbye to, an old friend that had been with me for decades, that had carried me this far. I was walking away from her too. The comfort she and the life she provided had given. No, it hadn’t been what I wanted. No, it wasn't what I believed in or deserved, but it had been a harbor in the storm, and I was leaving it. Consciously. To not return.

Almost on cue, my phone started ringing. It was one of my best friends, doing the same thing as me, but on another coast. We both felt some relief, fellow soldiers in arms.

The image of the wailing child hanging onto the park gate flashed back into my mind. I started laughing as I recounted it to my friend. Wasn’t this child kind of like us? Flanked by the freedom of choice, loved ones nearby, and yet we sometimes insisted on clinging to a meaningless gate? Perhaps it used to lock us in, or out, but it was open now, and still we clung. We lacked the courage to stop crying, to breathe, to look around, to notice it was open, and to LET GO. To step out onto the gravel, where there was no gate, where we had to use the strength of our own two legs and walk. The discomfort of the openness maybe stopped us. Because where was the next gate? And what would we cling to? Who taught us that clinging was the best way forward? What if we leapt forward, arms wide, laughing and ready to meet our next thing. What if that kid took a breath, calmed his nervous system, would he see that the sun shone, that his parents were right there watching, that he held his favorite book, and that his surroundings were a PLAYGROUND, full of things he might love: swings, slides, ladders, new friends.

Sometimes it’s hard to let go of the familiar feel of cold iron. Were we playing both inmate and warden?

#freedom #authenticity #redoutfitlife #intentionalliving #alignment #loss #levelup #grief #choice