Freedom and idealism

I don't know why.

I guess it's because I'm at a point in my life where I am becoming more self-disciplined, where I'm accepting my limits more readily, and where I realize that what makes me unhappy in my life, always, is the extent to which my freedom is limited. Not the freedom to murder, obviously, or freedom to do ugliness. Just the places where my choices and an honest and open expression of my thoughts, feelings, self, and choices are limited.

I realized, today, that the reason why that period of my life, of most peoples' lives, where I felt the most idealistic - my years in college and grad school, especially - was because it was the period of my life when I was experiencing the most freedom and expansion of my freedom and exploring a world that I had, up till that point, not had much contact with.

The most idealistic times in my life were when I first entered college and was living a life on my own, for the first time. And when I was in grad school and dating my best friend and exploring a world freely with someone else, for the first time, that I had not known very well, up until that point, and sharing it with someone who also appreciated learning about that world with me and that kind of freedom. It was an innocent exploration, for the most part. Neither of us were using drugs or wildly partying. We were just exploring the world - a world of sexuality, of politics, of people we were not familiar with and had not experienced, before, of talking frankly with someone else we cared about, and making tons of mistakes in both of our first really serious relationship - and learning about everything it had to offer with someone who could appreciate both the experience and the freedom to have it that most other people, up until that point in my life, could not have appreciated as well.

I guess it's because I'm growing up and I'm letting go of much of the folly and immaturity of my youth. But much of that immaturity and folly is also associated, in my mind, with that freedom that so made my life worth living and such a deeply refreshing and rewarding experience.

Maybe that's why I'm so sensitive to efforts to limit my freedom. Because it is, for me, the best opportunity for learning and growth and associated with the time in my life when I learned and grew the most and the most profoundly and experienced a world I was largely unfamiliar with, up until that point.

Freedom matters to me because it is what makes all of the most profound and deeply enriching times in my life possible.

And today, for some reason, maybe because I'm getting to a point in my life where I am accepting limitations in my life more readily or maybe it is because I get tired of all kinds of limitations and impositions that I don't think I should have to put up with, I've been feeling a little down about not having it in my life.

What I need is some vegi phad thai, some obscure, cheap beer, and, ideally, I would need someone I could spill my heart with. I'd love that to be a girl. But I don't really have one, in my life, right now, that I could just spill with, like that, and get to listen to all of the exciting things she is learning and ready to share with me. That's the one I'm waiting for.

I suppose phad thai and beer will have to do, in the meantime. But I'm sure its the side of freedom and idealism that I crave the most.