In the air

Many people associate summer with freedom.  When we were children, summer meant school being out, and being master of one's own time and energy.

I find that spring and fall are the times I feel most free.  Change is in the air.  It feels like something new is on the way.  And that's when I have the sense of unfettered motion, of expansiveness, of being exhilaratingly untethered.

Does that say anything about what freedom means to others, and what it means to me?  Maybe.  I crave security and routine, not adventure.  But security and routine are not the place where I find freedom.  Throughout my life, it's when I've left behind the known and the familiar that I've found that sense of possibility.  They've been frightening moments -- but moments when I could not avoid the realization that I was making my own way.

As the seasons change, the world around us moves toward a new destination.  Summer and winter are stable, the zenith and the nadir of the year.  They linger, and we wonder if we will ever emerge.  It's when the stasis breaks and the seasons are on the move that the future opens me.  I don't know where I'm headed, but I know I'm not standing still.  Something new is coming, and what I do will determine what it is.  That's a risk, but a heady one.  It's what freedom feels like to me.