Today I am confined to my bed and in some considerable pain. I catch my mind churning over with frustration as on days like this, I can feel like a bird trapped in a cage. So I decided to read and as I glanced over my bookshelf I was drawn to choosing Victor Frankl's book “Man´s Search For Meaning”, actually for the 2nd time, as I had previously read this book some years ago. I guess it is not the most cheerful book to read on a bad day, but as I started to re-read it, it brought back to me one of the books key messages, personal freedom!
For those of you who may not have come across Victor Frankl, Victor was a Psychiatrist that was confined for several years in concentration camps, including the infamous Auschwitz, where he had to face all sorts of inexplicable horrors. With the full knowledge there was no literal escape he learnt to escape on the inside. That is to say, nobody could take away his personal freedom no matter what was happening to him and to those around him.
It know it might seem unfair to relate my day in bed to the horrors that Victor faced, however, it did inspire me to consider my own personal freedom. Today I was feeling stuck, trapped in my own body and my bed. So after putting Victor´s book down, I asked myself what freedom do I have today?
In my bedside journal here is what I wrote:
Today I am not free….
To leave my house
To visit a friend
To walk along my local beach
To go to my meditation group
To cook a meal
To clean my house (oh well)!
But today I am free…
To cuddle my cats
To read a book
To listen to music
To do my tarot cards
To watch the birds in the trees
To daydream
To meditate in bed
To order a take out
To burn my aromatherapy oils
And last but not least, I was free to write this little piece for The Mighty. It turned out that the list of the things I am free to do from my bed, was the longest!