Freedom

Being an American automatically means being an expert in freedom, yes? We take pride in being the "Leaders of the Free World", of supporting freedom and democracy in the "developing world", and of our efforts an "building" democracies after toppling tyrants. (That last isn't working out so well, but we had good intentions, yes?) We are a freedom loving people, demanding our civil rights (though we are often slow in granting other people their civil rights) and making sure we have enough weapons on hand to protect those freedoms from all "enemies, foreign and domestic". (We are particularly afraid of the "domestic" ones though we gladly sacrificed a bunch of our freedoms so the NSA could protects us from some of those "foreign" ones.)

Then I turned in my "American Consumer" card and am now on the verge of living one of those "alternate" lifestyles people love to talk about without understanding much about them. Closing down an entire way of living, making a 180 degree turn, and taking up an entirely new way of living is the biggest challenge I have ever undertaken. There is no aspect of my life that isn't being drastically altered, all the way down to the kinds of shoes I put on my feet. The changes in my world view are even more dramatic than those of my wardrobe, and it turns out I didn't know nearly as much about "freedom" as I assumed.

Like most Americans now days I have had several jobs taken away from me. In every case we faced a near iminate disaster. Kids needed food and clothes, a roof over their heads, and medical care. The way I provided those things for the people I loved had been snatched away by "changing markets" or "right sizing" or because "things just aren't working out". It was bullshit. In almost every case someone figured they could make themselves just a tiny bit richer by taking something away from others. In some cases I found another job nearby; in others the family was uprooted and moved hundreds or thousands of miles to another job. Jobs that, in many cases, were then taken away yet again. We did okay in spite of these repeated assaults; partly by dogged hard work, partly by a determination to survive, and partly by luck. Not everybody gets the luck they need and more and more are becoming casualties in our failing society.

And then they came and took my last, and in some ways my best, job away. It was good pay. It had good benefits. It had a matching 401K program. Me doing my job well made it easier for other people to do their jobs well. But someone decided that taking my job away and making those other people work that much harder to do their jobs would make that someone just that little bit richer and (in this particular case) prove to some other rich people just who was really in charge. That they were hurting people who had done them no harm, people who, in fact, had given them their best efforts, didn't matter at all. It was ugly. It was evil. When the revolution comes it wouldn't bother me at all if the someones lose everything; end up pushing a shopping cart down the street wondering which bridge will keep the rain off of them this night. Evil is as evil does and those who have pushed thousands of working Americans into the ranks of being poverty stricken have no complaint coming when the devil knocks on their door and hands them an eviction notice.

But in my case (and sadly, so far as I know, my case alone in this particular corporate event) we do not face the looming disaster of other jobs that had been taken ... for I was about to give this one back to them. And I discovered a big part of freedom I never knew existed; that of not being threaten with a job loss. My ability to care for those I love no longer depends on the whims of those who would hurt me with casual indifference so long at it puts a few more pennies in their pockets. I can go about my business without being threatened by business.

Freedom, it turns out, is found by walking away from the American Dream.

Calm, clear, content, compassionate, curious ...

I have made the transition to living "off the grid". We have reduced our personal holdings to one modest sailboat and the things that will fit inside her hull. (We were unsuccessful in selling the house so it is rented at basically a "break even" price. When the current lease runs out we will try to sell it again.) With expenses reduced there is no need for to work for anyone else in any form; not as independent contractors, not as business owners, not as employees nor as consultants. We don't need "part time" or seasonal work. A modest amount of savings coupled with the money we have invested in Social Security should see us through. (Sorry T-party / Republicans, that is not an "entitlement" and I am not a "taker." Should you succeed in privatizing it and taking it away from me then you will be a thief. Should you do such a thing it is my hope the nation will rise up, burn your house down, and drive you into the wilderness.)

There is a transition period, moving from land to water. The boat is on the hard while we do final preparations for putting it in big, blue water. Our days are filled with relentless work; 8, 10, sometimes 12 hours at a time. The work is physical and demanding; sanding the hull, breaking down the rigging, pulling the propeller for overhaul, installing a wind vane, endlessly climbing the 12 foot ladder needed to get aboard - there is nothing easy about it. But it is completely different from working for a living. Everything we do is directly tied to how we live. This transition is a time for toughening up a body whose only exercise for the last couple of decades was found at the gym, parsed out a couple of hours a day a few times a week. Now activity is day long and already, just a couple of weeks into it, my body is adjusting. It was, however, an adjustment I had not anticipated.

In a like minor my heart and mind have to adjust as well; an adjustment also not anticipated. One that came as a complete surprise was a literal change in mind set. In these last few weeks something akin to a meme has become a mental habit. Calm, clear, content, compassionate, curious ... at any given moment I seek to have some combination of these as the ground state of my experience. When it isn't so, when some task at hand is proving utterly frustrating, when the day's efforts have left cramping muscles or a headache in their wake, or some bit of news has sparked an appropriate outrage, just repeating the five words helps restore the balance. The task will still be at hand, the muscles still ache, the anger still linger - but a different view will prevail. The task will get done, the ache is both honestly earned and will eventually fade, and the anger?

Well, anger is often the only response to injustice and evil. But being calm does not mean being passive. Clear thoughts are essential for getting from one place to another, for confronting an evil and finding a cure. Muddied thinking leads to dead ends and bad decisions and is often the cause of evil in the first place. It is possible to be utterly content with one's small part in engineering fundamental and drastic changes. Compassion is always good and particularly necessary when confronting an enemy. Without it one becomes what one opposes. And it is only the curious who make anything happen at all.