So much of what we think is packaged. Free running thought is sometimes enjoyable, sometimes frustrating; all in all, it is what it is: “unbridled”.
While the rippling enthusiasm of a young colt bounding and kicking, sprinting and zig zagging in a summer-lush field is sport to watch, it is only what it is… unbridled. The colt’s purpose, though it has no knowledge of this, is to develop muscle and reactions that will serve in a contest for a mate or in a flight for survival. The colt’s joyful actions are taken in service of an — though unconscious — anticipated need for reaction.
We are like that. We have body, mind, and spirit too. All of which from time to time have enthusiastic flexing, movement, and joy. No real reason at the time, but reason enough in design. The mind needs to be quick, as well the body in times of need. In times of reaction. The spirit is sometimes assuaged as well. It has to have depth and stolid consistency to deal with times of hardship, and to have the resiliancy to withstand the tests then flourish once again in times of joy.
Packaged thought is disconnected yet necessary. I have to do this NOW. Whatever that is — groceries, pick up the kids, go skating… whatever it is, that is what it is at the time. The art of living comes in drawing connections, or is it in managing connections, between one time an the next. The art of living is in connecting, relating, pulling the experience of the past into the fore when needed, laterally drawing like experiences together when needed…. connecting the packages. Bridling the unbridled for the purpose of being free.
The discipline of living free. A paradox. An oxymoron. Discipline — free. Juxtaposed… or not. Freedom does have a ‘price’ we might have heard. It does have a cost in action, for sure. But energy is abounding, so where to put our energy except into actions that free us? There’s no other reasonable answer. Put energy into bondage?! Not a good answer. The packages of thought, the boundaries of the moment are put to service in the well led life. They are moments to be consumed, as they are because they are what they are. There is not another moment to supplant the one you are in, so live it and be it and do what it is that moment demands, or wants, or requests, or needs. That package is the present. The one you open only now, and now, and now again. The precious ‘present’ that we are given to live and connect and to find freedom within.
Unbridled, bridled. It is what it is.
