Russell Wardlow

I can never be a kid again
if you keep being so serious-
and we can never kid again

I can never be grown enough
if you keep telling me-
I’m just not old enough

You know the feeling when you’re kinda driving around and don’t know exactly where you’re going, like you have an idea and maybe even some directions but for what’s in front of you none of it makes sense, and you’re so tense- frustrated and anxious, but then a new calm comes cascading over you like shade from ocean, like clouds on the move, and you start to feel good, rested and peaceful from the extra time in the car, lost in your own way, enjoying the space and scenery, almost defiant to the demands of time and the constraints of endless ‘must do’s’ all around you.

And then even that brief respite in reflective paradise ends, and it’s back to life where all these directions just don’t apply to your journey, yet still you make sense of them if only to fit in and at least know there’s something you’re doing right.

But what of a kid, a kid being constantly stuffed by the baggage missteps and pains of the adults around him. Teaching him to repress repress repress, conform, don’t, not, no, stop

anything but feel, seek, and discover, finding yourself without fear of punishment inflicted upon him because their fears and haunted memories of not getting it right and feeling empty, weighing so heavy on him that he soon grows with the weight of both adulthood demands and childhood curiosities conflicting without enough understanding love and ability to navigate even just one of them all on its own.

So he grows in that car, following directions he can’t read, concocting peace down certain avenues that may only serve to hurt him more down the road giving him lessons of punishment- replacing time and love, which hardens his heart to love, straining his capacity to take in any semblance of peace, all the while still cruising on without knowing his own identity, because he has been every bit of denial and force imposed upon him, that he has yet to learn how to live and not fear mistakes, so he overcompensates at the wheel, tense in his direction, veering into crash after crash, all avoidable but now he believes that this is the experience of life, crash til u make it, and maybe after enough accidents you’ll finally find your way.

I titled this “when life imprisons you…feel free” because ultimately we start life without any control. We’re simply a learning robot, absorbing all things around us, being prodded by every kind of authority figure, never able to leave that robotic identity, instead of growing a conscience for ourselves, we grow up and learn to navigate life as robots, living without free thought, without self autonomy.

But the ‘feel free’ part speaks to the decision to feel something else but trapped and imprisoned, to tell your mind to experience something different than what you’ve told it time and time again, daring to feel emboldened to become more than assigned or expected. It’s up to us to decide how we feel, that’s something that can’t be controlled. We can decide, regardless if we want to do something or not, if it feels good, experience it.

Feeling is searching for freedom, it’s becoming intimate with your experience, it provides purpose to emotions.

Feeling is the freedom we have constantly in endless supply once we become properly aware of it, so many of other peoples feelings get enforced upon us that we can’t even recognize our own from the many, so we digress and stuff our true nature deep down and never bother to uncover it again because digging deep takes more work than stuffing, stuffing is now second nature to most of us.

But when the levy breaks, what’s deep down which has been laden and bottled up, will want to get out. So how do you give it proper air to breath before it comes out in a burst uncensored and uncontrolled, distorted from what it once was after being compromised by repression for the sake of others?

So often, we apologize for who we are, for who we’re trying to become, and for who we’re still trying to discover within ourselves because shouldering someone else’s weight is more easier than our own, we find comfort in our discomfort by making others more comfortable. We haven’t been brought up to love and explore ourselves freely, fiercely and fearlessly, and use that love found of self to love others, and not at the cost of our selves.

Because we know not all directions are created equal. Each of us has their own path specific to them, and we do more for humanity by allowing everyone to find it their own way rather than coercing their journey.

Simply put, feeling free happens in stages or cycles like all things, and it starts at allowing our kids to feel themselves and encourage them along their paths and embolden them with every turn, not jump in taking control, taking them our own route.

A child has to learn how to be an adult, and an adult shouldn’t have forgotten how it was to be a kid, with those lessons maturing them. Because a kid is free, exploring, loving, learning, falling and rising. It’s the adults that snatch that childhood away and feed them distorted views of life and reality that only serve to imprison them. So to ‘feel free,’ we have to stop imprisoning ourselves and unlock the prisons we place upon our kids.

And just drive with the windows down. And get where you’re going when you get there. No shortcuts. Just enjoy the ride and find yourself in the journey.

Embrace the difficulties. They make the ride worthwhile. Without them, you couldn’t tell what was good if nothing was bad. The bad points you to the good, so it all works out in the end, because you can’t truly know one without the other.

So ‘feel free’ and let the kids live a little, and find then, reclaim your inner child by watching them, because when life imprisons us all, the only ones that didn’t get the message are our kids, unless we don’t allow them to do what we don’t do, which is, ‘feel free.