I took aa trip. It had been such a long time since I flew away to see a friend. This pandemic shut the world down and took away my choices.

It was a wall of everyone has to do what everyone else is doing. In fact, it was the law. Or very close to the law. And it was considered the moral thing to do. Behind a mask is someone who cares, so if you don’t have a mask you don’t care.

Maybe it is, maybe it was the right thing to do.

But discussion about whether it was or not was—is—silenced. Repressed, censored, shut down, deplatformed and shamed.

I took a flight and followed the federal law to wear a mask on the plan in in the airport. I wore it the whole way.

And when I landed, I was so happy to see the friends and family that I had come to see.

We walked around this new-to-me town.

It was beautiful. I enjoyed the shops and bought some things. We found a used bookstore that looked more like a headshop.

And in the back, I met a lovely gray-haired woman whose last name was Cassady.

Famous beat author Neal Cassady’s daughter was selling books and showing memorabilia. She was delighted that I knew who her father was.

Oh yes. The beats are very important to me. These people who took the road less traveled. Who went against the conformity that engulfed the nation in the 1950’s and sucked the marrow from the bones of life.

They got together and had conversations about forbidden subjects and tried unthinkable things.

And they wrote. They wrote and found ways for others to read their words

They opened up the minds of America and the world.

What would they have thought of my trip? How is my current situation similar to theirs?

There was a whole world war that America had just come through when these guys were making the scene.

The man in the gray flannel suit was the ideal for them.

Except it wasn’t.  In a 1958 Esquire article Kerouac writes

“a sinister new kind of efficiency appeared in America; maybe it was the result of the universalization of television and nothing else (the Polite Total Police Control of Dragnet’s “peace” officers), but the beat characters after 1950 vanished into jails and madhouses, or were shamed into silent conformity”

What options did them have? What options do we have now? I know there are a set of people with extended unemployment checks and their loved ones—or not—sitting at home thinking of what to do next.

The beats would be looking for life and a new style of American culture.

How would they tweak this? I’d like to think of what Neal, Jack, Allen and Lawrence would look at what possibilities are here.

And of course I found what I’d forgotten I knew while on the road.

I think I want to get on the road more often. And I want to read all the beat books again.

Juneteenth is now a federal holiday. I learned about Juneteenth maybe ten years ago. The basic story is that President Abraham Lincoln had freed all slaves in the Emancipation proclamation. But that proclamation was not applicable until the North won the civil war.

The former slave owners did not tell all the slaves they were free when the war was conceded. It took Union soldiers to come tell these people their new freedom.

Jefferson said the beautiful phrase in the declaration of independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”

Liberty is an unalienable right. And yet, we can be alienated from our liberty.

There is a story that circus elephants are trained while they are little, with a strong leg band chained to a stake. They fight and pull to get away and have their freedom. They gall their leg, tearing their skin bloody. Thus, they learn not to fight the restraint. This lasts past their growth into adulthood.

It doesn’t even take the actual wound anymore. Just the memory or the threat of that pain is enough.

I have framed my understanding of the world and placed things into categories. There are forbidden things, things that cause pain.

But I am not the same as I was yesterday. And I’m not in the same place. What might be possible now that wasn’t possible before?

I am glad this story of Juneteenth is a yearly holiday now. The declaration of Independence wasn’t enough. Our understanding of liberty needs to be revisited.

What freedoms have I surrendered and forgotten? I can test some limits.

It’s always and every day a choice. The calvary can come in and let me know that I’m free. I’m grateful to the people in my life who do just that.

And also, I want to be my own calvary. That takes revisiting my assumptions and testing limits regularly.

I value my freedom. Liberty is worth fighting for and protecting.

I finally got the protective head gear so I can spar.

My martial arts needs to go to the next level. I have to engage with a real fight. A real fight with lots of padding.

I was excited to try, but when I put on the bulky headgear, I saw that my nose is completely unprotected. That was sobering, but I was eager to do this!

So I got on the mat. The class had us all rotate through sparring everyone. And by the end, I had bruised ribs and I’d been punched in the nose twice

Twice.

It hurt a lot.
I was crying a little.
I had to think about this as I shuffled out to my car. Was this something I was willing to do again?

Why was I doing this?

Studying self-defense and martial arts was changing my world. I was learning that I was worth protecting—and how to do it.

I didn’t’ have to accept other people hurting, cornering or taking advantage of me. I could fight back and defend myself.

But this!

I was letting someone hurt me. Wasn’t that kinda the opposite of self-defense?

It felt a lot more real than the practice sessions. This was clearly a new level. I had to be willing to be hurt.

Which brings to mind a line from the Princess Bride

Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something

Pain will come. And it is shocking.

What will I do with it? Avoiding it is a valid choice, but so is leaning into it.

Since the pain is coming, it would be good to have an awareness of what I could do with it.

As I held an icepack to my head, I realized I could learn to block those punches to my head.

But that meant I’d have to take a few more punches along the way.

But the difference was my sparring partner cared about me and we were practicing together.

That makes a lot of difference.

I can do a lot more when I push past what I thought my boundaries were.

She had been told she had 11 months to live. That lit everything in a new light.

I didn’t have time for being short with people, she said.

This woman was telling her story on YouTube, and she’d lived past the 11 months the doctor had given her. But she retained her understanding that it was not worth holding on to resentment.

There is no time for that.

I once saw a book, a story of a man walking with a monk. The two approached a stream where a rich woman expensively dressed and dripping with jewelry was standing. She demanded that the monk carry her across the stream.

“You can get across this stream as easily as we can!” the man said to her.

But the monk knelt and let the woman climb on his back. He carried her across the stream, putting her down on the other side.

They continued on their way, and the man kept talking with outrage at this presumptuous woman the whole day.

When dusk fell, the monk turned to him “I put that woman down hours ago, but you’ve been carrying her this whole time.”

That’s resentment. That load of how much wrong has been done to my precious self is too much to carry. Or even in this case, a wrong done to someone else.

In the Big Book of alcoholics anonymous, one of the twelve steps is to take inventory of your life. Bill W calls out resentment as particularly devastating. It is a poison not to be indulged in. The alcoholic will use it to justify drinking.

I’m not an alcoholic, but I am weak in many many many areas. I can’t see straight if I let resentment have room.

And it crowds out the love I want to feel, and to give, to the people around me.

When that 11-months-to-live woman brought up resentment for the second time this week, I too saw how I don’t have time for this addictive poison. That monk was right. I can put down the burden even if I take it up.

Life is too short. This small stuff deserves just enough attention to get past it, and it is serious enough not to ignore. I want to focus on love and life.