I'm trying to remember anything salient that happened yesterday to write about, but nothing comes up. I came to work, I went to yoga, I went to the supermarket, I prepared myself dinner, I went to bed. I did have one a long cinematic dream that even had a plot, but I don't think it was personally relevant, it's like my mind makes up stuff if my waking life is just routine.
On my way back from the retreat I was fortunate enough to get a ride with someone who was coming to Madrid. She said that she didn't like living in Madrid and was eager to move, but she was just making a nice group of friends as these feelings were emerging. "I sometimes wonder if I move precisely because I'm making good friends", she said. "I know exactly what you mean", I replied, "you don't want the roots to dig in too deep, because you want the freedom to move. Connecting with people can feel scary for people like us".
—"Yes! That's exactly it! What have you done about it?" she asked.
—"Oh, I wish I had an answer for you, but I haven't solved this riddle", I replied.
—"I can't be sure if I want to move because I'm connecting, or if I want to move because I want more novelty", she said.
—"And I can't give you clarity on that either, but I do know people like us need a lot of novelty to be engaged with life, we tend to wither with routine, good personal connections or not".
We talked about how stimulating it can be to move to a new place. Constant fresh starts: new people, new food, new dwellings. Blank slate time and time again. I avoided (or perhaps forgot) saying that the blank slate in itself can lose its luster. Moving can become routine too.
"It's tremendously difficult to provide ourselves the variety we need. I think this is because it's impossible to know what we don't know. We think in degrees of difference from what we already know, we might try a new dance style but we don't think about something radically different, say... creating a new perfume from essential scents or... I come up blank because these things are outside the realm of my imagination. Perhaps this is the reason why we also enjoy meeting new people (particularly exotic ones), because they stimulate us to consider what's outside our box".
There was a third passenger in the car, a middle aged woman who was mostly quiet, listening to us. When the driver dropped us off at the train station to complete our journey to Madrid (the driver lived in the outskirts), I had a chance to chat with her one-on-one. She spent most of her vacations either trekking or going to dance retreats. She said she had met a lot of people whom liked both dancing and hiking. "That's strange" I said, "I can see I'm one of those, but I can't see what they have in common".
"It's the feeling of freedom" she answered.
I paused a couple of seconds to consider. A smile lit up my face "yes, it's indeed freedom" I said. And I understood how the previous conversation was related to this one through a poem by Khalil Gibran.
Our commitment to personal freedom is our chain.