Fidning Freedom

I love to play guitar. I have always said that I would give up my talent for golf if I could learn how to play the guitar and speak Italian fluently. Va bene.

I recently bit the bullet and bought a guitar. Not anything phenomenal but something to mediate the fact that the Italian thing just doesn’t seem to be working out.
And oh, I love to play. I’ve been playing at home a lot, practicing and strumming, and this week I decided to bring the guitar in and play for the children. Sometimes between regular and extended day I will lie down with the children and play some music. Usually this involves the mellower side of my ipod shuffle but this week it was yours truly, on the guitar.

The children loved it. I strummed and they dozed and it was so peaceful and beautifully calm in that room I wanted to stay put forever. But something else was happening, too. Something that made me feel able to strum without fear: I felt free.
In front of adults I am hesitant about my guitar. I think that perhaps I don’t play well enough and they are going to judge me, critique me, or anything of the sort, but with the children I felt simply at peace. Remarkably so. I looked out into their resting bodies and droopy eyes and felt again a profound sense of freedom.

This is not something incredible new. I teach children because they make me feel free, because they allow me to be my goofy, silly, REAL self all the time. They don’t care if I get it “right” or if I’m “correct” they just care that I am there and that I am authentic and that I am present.

I speak all the time about how much children give me, how much I learn from them, but this is perhaps the most precious gift they offer: the gift of freedom.
They provide the space in which to feel, to fly to the highest reaches of myself and defy the odds of what I thought my limitations were. I love them because in that space of freedom, they challenge me. They challenge me to accept myself for who I am and to stay open and present to all that life has to offer. The gift of freedom…is there anything better?

Live in peace,

Kate