Good evening ladies and gentleman

What does it mean to be free? To be truly free and disconnected from the problems in life holding back this ideal freedom, this idyllic happiness.

No idea.

What i do know is that the word freedom is often connected with another word- “financial.” As a generation, or even as a species we spend so long aspiring to this level of freedom, the idea that one day you could tell your boss where to go and live life as you please. Yet, you got up this morning and went to work, as you probably will tomorrow and the day after that. Are you free? Do you feel free?

I know i haven’t had any feeling of consistent freedom for years. Those good days just feel like day release from maximum security, twined to the inevitable stench of consistency as if you sleep each night next to a horse’s head.

How does one feel free- in a world that wants so badly to show you that you aren’t? If we look at it in such a matter of fact way- you are trapped. You are, I am, everybody is trapped and we should accept it for what it is and find the most effective ways to serve this life sentence as comfortably as possible. Maybe give a few hours, weeks, months, years, decades even to make sure that sofa comes, the TV gets slightly bigger every year and that car you dream of finds its way onto your drive- connected to the house you’re going to be dealing with payments on for the rest of your natural life.

I can’t sit and accept this happiness as what we should be striving for. Moreover as you scroll the internet, an endless source of information filled with an ever increasing number of car, cat and dog videos, i don’t think you can either. This happiness, we are supposed to see it as this hugely esoteric, massively significant goal in our life that we could spend most of our lives trying to aspire to. What if there is more to scrolling, to thinking, to feeling, to being happy and being at peace?

Now i’m not going to sit here and tell you to go and join a ballroom dancing class in order to find a level of freedom you have been lacking in your life up to this point, but bare with me. Freedom- or happiness for that matter are not destinations. We often rationalise these ideas we have been told will make us happy by treating them as a journey, a road onto which we lay out our lives to seek ultimate peace and happiness.

There is no such thing as ultimate happiness, i don’t think. These huge ideas, terrifyingly far away, leaving you with a resounding hope for the future. “If i can just get there…” or “when i get to that point it will start to get better…” Its a pipe dream, an idea that makes you ultimately feel better about your life (temporarily) but isn’t happy- not to me.

In my experience, peace usually involves being sat alone in the dark. This almost fugue state is beautifully lethargic, your body becomes so heavy its hard to even lift your arm, but you don’t want to move….all you want is to fall so deep and so hard into that music that reality falls away from around you as the beat and melody take you deeper into your trance.

This is the power of music, for in those 3 minutes and 49 seconds- you are as close to free as you have been all day.

What if it wasn’t that simple- what if there could be more to it. Darkness or light, next time that song comes on, try something slightly different, when completely alone, comfortable in the isolation you have become so familiar with.

Move. Move to the music. It doesn’t matter whether you are a good dancer or a fluid dancer. Just move to the music. Throw your arms around, spin around, kick, spin- just MOVE. Move for the whole song, change your movement as the beat changes, feel it. That’s the most important thing. 

Feel it. Feel every beat in every concierto, every riff and every octave change. Music combined with movement is the connection to the soul living within your body and that connection, that beautiful loving relationship is where you find peace. True peace is through feeling it. Then through feeling it over and over again, finding ways to continuously nurture that connection is ultimately where we find happiness. 

There is no formula to being happy and through this there is no concept or idea that can provide you “ultimate” peace. But what if there were these moments, these fleeting moments where you were ultimately unaware of all the joys and the misery life wants you to feel all of. What if there were times where you just felt good, for the sake of feeling good. 

No reason, no end goal. Thats where happiness is. Just a moment. Soon to blow away and be gone into these pages of memories you will never remember but right there, right then. 

You are free.

So dance. Dance like nobody’s watching, jump higher than you ever think you should, have the cake if thats what you want. Love harder than you should and kiss like its the last time you will ever get to. These moments often seem impossible, especially when there is great distance between them. If you love someone, tell them. If you want to see something wonderful, go. Revel in its wander and sit in awe of the magnificence of what you stare at. 

Feel it, and ultimately be free from a world looking to control everything you are and everything you want to be.

For its the only thing worth doing.

To be free.

Yours, with love, always and forever. 

D.R x