The more things change, the more I become comfortable with who I really am.  I frequently look back at the person I was 14 years ago when I relocated to Montana.  I was a 24-year-old, who was a free spirit, that went against all norms.  The more I reminisce about life, the more I realize my misconceptions about the meaning of free-spirit.  I was trying to ‘become’ free at this point in my life, by going against the grain and trying to be as untraditional as possible.  One day I had the thought, “isn’t going against the grain actually confining?”  I am trying to become free by staying in the confines of my own made-up definition of a free-spirit.  How free am I?

I have gotten a little smarter with every year of my life, and a few realizations have enlightened me to some new ideas.  I have been trying to ‘become’ a free spirit instead of just ‘being’ one.  If I learn to just be who I am, instead of trying to become who I am, then I am free.  Isn’t this, in fact, being a free-spirit? Isn’t being a free-spirit accepting who you are and flowing with it?  Sometimes you may move with the grain, and sometimes you may move against it.  Sometimes, there may be no grain at all.  Your’s just being, and not becoming.  Being, not becoming, is the whole essence of being free.

There is no one way to go in life.  I have never found a One Way sign, followed it, and never had to turn onto a different road or path.  Life itself is full of the Dialectic.  The Dialectic is the opposite pulls in life.  Can you know what joy is if you have never suffered?  Life has this Dialectic, as a matter of fact, it is Dialectic. Now that I am a little smarter, more enlightened and I know how to be, not become; I know I am traditional and untraditional.  I am social, and yet I am socially awkward.  I enjoy myself and the company of others.  I have suffered and I have found joy.  Without one, however, I would not be, nor enjoy, the other.

Life is a journey, and it is always changing.  At this point, my life is changing for the better.  With change comes self-knowledge, and with self-knowledge comes self-acceptance.  This self-acceptance leads to confidence, and this confidence leads to comfortableness.  Eventually, this comfortableness leads to me, and at the heart of me, is my free-spirit of just being.