Come Sail Away

I've been getting back into Ashtanga Yoga, which is the type of yoga that first hooked me over a decade ago. It's a vigorous practice, but the pitta (fire) energy in me really responds to it. Yesterday's practice was really challenging, but also physically satisfying and I had enough of what felt like victories to endure the difficulties and deal with my limitations with equanimity. Good practice for life!

Anyway, after class a fellow student asked if I was a sailor. I wasn't sure why he asked, and then he and the teacher both made reference to the swallow on my upper arm (pictured here in an old blog post). I said no, but I like the freedom that she symbolizes.

The desire to be free is a strong one, and I think it's healthy, too. If we bury that desire too deeply, we tend to be unhappy, and that's no good. But I think there's such a thing as too much freedom. I read an article in The New Yorker about Aaron Swartz, a boy genius who wound up committing suicide while still in his 20s. While many factors contributed to his decision to end his life, the article discusses the fact that he had always been allowed to do what he wanted to do, so he never learned to cope with things he didn't want to do.

And the thing is, life, whether it's a life of total servitude or total freedom or the something in between that most of us experience, is gonna come with some things we don't want to do. Learning to stay is really difficult sometimes, and I believe this, in a nutshell, is why children are such great teachers. Children force you to stay, to cope with your old shit, and they show you the value of a relationship, of the kind of love that is allowed to bloom when no one's going anywhere.

This is the kind of love I want to have with my partner, too. Previously, I had someone who wasn't going anywhere, but we didn't share the kind of love that is powerful enough to continue breaking through the difficulty. We also failed to find enough ways to be free, even within the confines of our grown-up lives, and it cost us.

With my love of a lifetime, on the other hand, we've got the powerful love thing going. We've both grown immensely and positively glowed on a regular basis just from being together, but when it didn't feel easy, when freedom was restricted, when compromises had to be made that were in conflict with what one or the other of us valued most in life, one or the other of us has always walked out. In the past, that's been me, and now, it's him. Or rather, it's me walking out because I'm finally confronting the fact that he's really gonna move away from my kids and I, so it's time for me to put my energy elsewhere. Sigh...

The other night I was reading to my son, and I came across a passage that beautifully expresses the depth of the loss I'm experiencing. I had to stop in the middle of this passage, too choked up to continue to read aloud, but also comforted by the universality of what I'm experiencing:

The world turns and the world spins, the tide runs in and the tide runs out, and there is nothing in the world more beautiful and more wonderful in all its evolved forms than two souls who look at each other straight on. And there is nothing more woeful and soul saddening than when they are parted.

--Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy by Gary Schmidt

What a great passage. The main character, Turner, often fantasized about "lighting out for the Territories."

Speaking of lighting out, Styx has something to say on that score, as they began reminding me on the drive home from the yoga studio last night:

I'm sailing away,

Set an open course for the virgin sea,

'Cause I've got to be free,

Free to face the life that's ahead of me,

On board, I'm the captain, so climb aboard,

We'll search for tomorrow on every shore,

And I'll try, Oh Lord I'll try, to carry on

I look to the sea,

Reflections in the waves spark my memory,

Some happy, some sad,

I think of childhood friends and the dreams we had,

We lived happily forever, so the story goes,

But somehow we missed out on the pot of gold

But we'll try best that we can to carry on

A gathering of angels appeared above my head,

They sang to me this song of hope and this is what they said,

They said come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me lads,

Come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me,

Come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me baby,

Come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me

I'd sure like to do that sometimes, but I can't. I'm not 20 anymore. I've got a couple of kids, a job, a house... One day I'll have more freedom again, but for now, I'm going to discover what I can from staying put. I'm going to have adventures, but they will most likely be either in the Midwest or they'll be planned and budgeted for months in advance. That's just the reality of my current situation.

I know that I will discover more with a partner than I can on my own, both on the adventures and back at home. I've learned that over the last couple of years in a way I didn't understand it before. Now I just have to get used to the possibility that the man who drove that message home so handsomely may not be the partner I'm seeking after all...