Being Free

There’s nothing I want more on this earth than to be free.

This, I believe.

“Imagine the basketball going through the hoop before it leaves your hand,” my dad says.

I stop dribbling and hold the ball on my hip. “Huh?”

“Imagine the ball going through the net. Hear it swish. Feel your excitement,” he says.

I’m in middle school, and my dad is stealing minutes away from important grownup things—splitting wood, paying bills, cleaning gutters—to coach me on my foul shots. As a four-year high school all-star, he knows the game of basketball.

I expect technical advice, not this. I look at his face; it’s soft and earnest. He’s not joking around.

“O-kaaaay,” I say.

I don’t know what he’s talking about, so I pretend. I place my feet behind the foul line, designated by a strip of silvery-gray duct tape adhered to old concrete slab where a trailer once stood. This slab is my basketball court.

I face the backboard and consider his suggestion as I begin my routine.

Bounce 1. Bounce 2. Bounce 3.

Pause.

Bend my knees.

Pause again.

Look at the rim. Look at the net. Imagine the swish.

Push off with both legs.

Let the ball fly.

It leaves my hand and arcs high in the air. The trajectory is right on target. I hold my breath and watch the ball begin to descend, just where it belongs.

Then it hits the rim and bounces back in my direction.

Pffftt.

The wisdom embedded in that moment feels soul-worthy, and experience has taught me to pay attention to soul work. My father taught me how to imagine things the way I want them to be rather than expend energy being stuck on how things are. “Visualize what you want in your mind,” he insisted. “It’s the first step toward making things real. It just takes practice.”

These days, I imagine freedom.

Freedom is a notion I never considered when I was younger. No, I was dutiful. If my father expected me to stack wood, I stacked wood. If my mother expected me to wash dishes, I washed dishes. Splinters may have pierced my work gloves and puckery fingertips may have formed on my fingers, but I did what was expected of me, whether I wanted to or not.

Being dutiful got me through college. Dutiful accompanied me in the black of the night while I nursed sleepless babies. Dutiful bound me to an impossible marriage. But dutiful had no regard for my spirit.

Now I imagine what freedom looks like. I see it, hear it, and feel it. It’s wrapping my hands around a steaming mug of coffee while I watch the waves dance on the shore and the seagulls dance in the sky. Freedom means putting words on paper for no other reason than because it makes my heart sing. Freedom means spending time with a loved one who needs my help. Freedom means being in a steady, unyielding relationship that works when we spend time together or apart.

Being free means being in service to the yearnings of my spirit.

I believe being that deep down, that’s what everybody wants, and I’m no different than anybody else. But I’m blessed with a tool to get me there, gifted to me by my father on a makeshift basketball court in the back yard. Thanks to him, I move closer to freedom every single day.

This, I believe.