A Different Kind of Freedom

Yesterday, whilst walking through the park on my way to meet my soul sister for breakfast at a garden centre café, I deliberately chose a different path.

I often enjoy taking a different route, and that morning I found myself drawn towards a quieter path.

It was raining lightly.

The kind of gentle rain that arrives as summer begins to loosen its grip and autumn quietly makes itself known.

Tiny droplets hung in the air.

The trees seemed freshly washed.

The paths glistened.

The air felt clear.

As I walked, I found myself being more present.

Not because I was trying to be mindful.

Not because I was searching for insight.

I simply felt deeply connected to the life around me.

And somewhere along that walk, a feeling appeared that I had never quite experienced before.

A sense of freedom.

Not financial freedom.

Not emotional freedom.

Not social freedom.

Not professional freedom.

Not even spiritual freedom in the way I have often understood it.

Something else.

Something deeper.

As I continued walking, I found myself quietly whispering different forms of freedom to myself.

Financial freedom.

Social freedom.

Emotional freedom.

Professional freedom.

Creative freedom.

Freedom of thought.

Freedom of expression.

Freedom to choose.

Freedom to love.

Freedom to create a life that feels like my own.

And as I named each one, I felt grateful.

Because every one of those freedoms has mattered in my life.

Some of them were hard won.

Some took years.

Some required courage.

Some required sacrifice.

Some required stepping away from expectations, relationships, beliefs, or versions of myself that no longer belonged to me.

These were not small freedoms.

They shaped the course of my life.

They made possible the life I live today.

As I walked, I realised that these freedoms were not separate from what I was experiencing.

In many ways, they had created the conditions for it.

There are freedoms we fight for.

Freedoms we work towards.

Freedoms we protect.

Freedoms that allow us to become authors of our own lives.

In my own life, many of those freedoms were not simply desirable. They were necessary.

Without them, I am not sure I could have recognised what I was feeling.

And yet, as I continued walking, it became clear that none of them fully described it.

The closest word I can find is existential.

For much of my life, freedom had direction.

It involved movement.

Towards something.

Away from something.

There was often another challenge to meet.

Another freedom to secure.

Another step to take.

Another horizon calling me forward.

And there was good reason for that.

Much of what I treasure in my life emerged through perseverance, determination, courage, and hope.

Yet yesterday, for a few moments, it felt as though I stepped outside that movement.

Not because life was complete.

Not because all my questions had been answered.

Not because all my wounds had healed.

Not because I had arrived.

But because, for those few moments, there was nowhere else I needed to be.

Nothing missing.

Nothing urgent.

Nothing demanding.

There was simply this life.

This walk.

The rain.

The trees.

The fresh air.

The path beneath my feet.

The quiet awareness of being alive.

And somehow that felt enough.

Not as a conclusion.

Not as an achievement.

Not as an answer.

Simply as an experience.

What struck me most was that this freedom felt different from all the others.

Most freedoms ask something of us.

Effort.

Choice.

Persistence.

Courage.

They require us to move, change, build, leave, begin, or become.

This freedom seemed to ask for nothing.

It arrived while I was walking.

While I was paying attention.

While I was fully present to the life unfolding around me.

I have thought about that experience since.

Not because I fully understand it.

I don't.

I only know that I caught a glimpse of a freedom unlike any I had known before.

A freedom that seemed to exist beneath all the other freedoms I have spent much of my life pursuing.

A freedom that could not be earned.

A freedom that could not be achieved.

A freedom that appeared unexpectedly on a rainy autumn morning and left behind more questions than answers.

Perhaps every freedom that came before had created the conditions for me to notice it.

I am still writing my way towards it.

🌿

Dr Maliheh (Mali) Taheri
M.A.L.I. Neuro-Somatic Practice
Reflect. Reconnect. Grow.