Soon we’ll be celebrating the Jewish Passover holiday, the holiday of freedom. I’ve written a lot on the topic of freedom and the important role it plays in logotherapy.
I’d like to share some recent insights based on books and on life experience (which for me always go hand-in-hand).
The Passover hagadda was designed as a guide for sitting around the table and asking each other questions and then trying to answer them. The redemption story – “We were slaves in Egypt and God took us out…” – is introduced in an odd way, starting with the preface: “We begin on a derogatory note and end with a praiseworthy note.” Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hacohen Kook wonders: Obviously it’s a happier state of affairs to be free than to be enslaved. But why do we tell the story in this way?
He answers that slavery was more than a beginning to a story. Their slavery prepared them, better than any training could have, for their destiny. The hagadda is telling us that we were able to be free only because we were slaves at first. We are capable of serving God because we’ve taken the pure essence out of a horrible experience. There is a gain to humble beginnings: The essence of the slavery experience gave us the capacity to serve. The ultimate freedom is choosing to put your will aside to serve something more important. When we do this, subservience is actually an expression of freedom.
My associative thinking takes me to a different page in a different book where my study partner said, “We want to get happy by getting what we want. We have to exchange what we want for fulfilling our potential.” We learned that the only way out of suffering is accepting that we are powerless and being receptive to God’s guidance.
Based on this and on what was going on in my life I came to the realization that there is something basically wrong with the whole ‘control’ paradigm. It is true that we need to let go of what’s not in our control and take control of what is. The problem is that ‘control’ itself turns into a constantly burning issue, where we alternate between “Oh, goody! I can control this” and “Oh well, I guess this is out of my control.”
An alternative perspective is being open and participating in the flow of life. I’m not just talking about those times I am engaged in an activity in which I lose myself. I’m talking about my whole life being one big flow.
The Maharal notes that the exodus from Egypt was an experience of being lifted above the normal parameters and of time with its arduous process. Tradition says the matzo is flat because there was no time to let it rise but even the haste with which they left was unlike the haste of “being in a hurry.” They were transported beyond time/space to a state of mindfulness of being (to use Heidegger’s expression). Like the flow of a child immersed in play or an artist at work who has no cognizance of time passing, they were in a place where the normal processes of time stood still.
The ultimate flow is the ultimate freedom and the ultimate freedom is to be-in-relationship-with. At that moment God took them by the hand and led them to freedom, the freedom of being-in-relationship.
None of us can say we are totally free from bad habits and compulsions and certainly not from conditions of life. Yet we are essentially free. At any given point in time we can ask ourselves, “Is this what I really want?” We can catch ourselves midstream in a complaining rant and say “I don’t want to go there.”
If I am living in flow then to say that something is not in my control means that right now God is speaking – whether through nature, miracle, from up close or seemingly from a far distance away. And when something is in my control it means that now it is my turn to speak.
Therefore what is more helpful to me than speaking in terms of control is speaking in terms of being open to whatever life is bringing me and engaging in a dynamic dialogue with life. That’s when I enjoy playing music and stop killing my enjoyment by saying to myself “I would be enjoying this more if I could play better” That’s when I can give thoughtful consideration to what I want to say and not feel rushed to answer immediately. That’s when I am my most spontaneously creative, confident and clear.
One of the women in my ongoing study group once commented that she used to enjoy driving in New York. New scenery keeps coming up. She’s just going along with whatever comes, even a traffic jam, with open curiosity, attentiveness and flow. She’s just being present with whatever is happening right now and being a full, active participant in the process. That’s how I want to live my life. That’s what freedom means to me.