I DREAM OF FREEDOM

     I dreamed that I was running. Not from something or somebody. I was a girl and I ran down the road with my two friends. In my dream, I didn't question, why this simple thing filled me with happiness. It was the freedom of movement and the freedom from pain and fear that elated me. Now I sit, constantly shifting my leg to alleviate the pain in my knee. The running days are over for me, the young days are long gone. How much I could endure then, how unmindful I was of the bodily discomfort! 

     Writing that I realized that, although, of course, I could freely run and exert myself in my youth, there was also a feeling of heaviness. Its amazing, how much I did, despite that. I went mountain hiking, I schlepped all around Moscow on errands or for fun, using only the public transportation. Does everyone feel that their legs will fall off if they make another step, in their twenties? I don't know. 

     When I joined the Unification Church, and we had to walk for miles, fund-raising or proselytizing, I felt no such heaviness. If I was tired, I sat with a cup of coffee and read a book. Then I would go to the bathroom, put some light make-up on and feel a hundred times better. In fact, the worse I felt in the beginning of the run, the better my result was if I persevered. When we came home and went to bed at night, the sleeping bag on bare floor felt like a feather mattress. 

     I dream of freedom. Does it mean I don't have it? Nothing is preventing me from doing things that I want to do, except my physical limitations. "Starost - ne radost", as they say in Russia. The old age ain't no fun!