“You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame. On a cycle the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it’s right there, so blurred you can’t focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness.” ― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Freedom is Julie Andrews singing how alive the hills are on a German mountain. It is the breeze repeating that very song each time you begin a new hike.
Freedom isn’t just revolutions and rebellions. It is a legacy. It is the ability to improve. The opportunity to explore. The chance to learn something new.
True freedom to me, is that feeling you get when a day is perfect. So perfect that you can’t ever dream of it ending. It makes a story. Freedom can last forever in only a matter of moments.
That perfect day to me: is the off chance of having two hours alone to explore The Great Wall of China.
Walking 17 miles with your boyfriend in the middle of Arizona, nearly getting lost.
Having a car crammed with girls all dancing and screaming songs at the tops of their lungs, only to break in fits of giggles. All night dance parties or midnight runs for donuts.
Or even skydiving, bungee jumping, surfing, long road trips in a stick-shift SUV that you only learned how to drive a week prior, it is indulging in too many sweets.
My dad would always tell stories when I was a little girl about all the wacky adventures he went on as an adult. He would preach for days on end about working hard, making goals, and not backing down from being yourself. He talked about how hard it was to train for marathons and how the discipline was worth it in the end. He talked about ice climbing trips, scuba diving in the Caribbean, driving across the country on his beloved motorcycle. We would never be able to get through a family car trip without hearing the words, “When I rode my motorcycle…” at least once.
When he talked, his stories would come alive and his memories would dance just behind his eyes. It was obvious that even though driving westward on a motorcycle and getting caught in the middle of a rain storm was horrendous, every moment was worth it.
As he spoke of the tribulations he went through, his smile spun a tale of how much he would give to go back and do it all again. No matter how hard it may have been in the moment, the ending was what made everything worth it.
When my dad rode out West on his motorcycle, he left from Columbus. Switching between highways and backroads, he took his chance to see what he had only seen while whizzing by in a car or an airplane.
“I stopped at the [Mississippi] river because I have never seen it, beside flying over it or driving by it in a car,” he says. “I met two guys going to Columbus, where I left from, and they were going to meet a girl I worked with. What are the odds of that? If I wasn’t on my motorcycle —being part of the surrounding — I would have never stopped to enjoy the river bank and never would have meet those two guys.”
My dad took up riding, from his father — my grandpa. When I called to ask him, what freedom meant to him, the first thing he said was his motorcycle.
He described nights where he would just drive for an hour or so through the country and how it was the best stress reliever. He also said how relaxing it was to ride alone, or with a group of friends, and how he always got excited to ride it from Ohio to Washington D.C. for work. He has been all around the world, and the one thing he said he wished he had done was take the ride out west.
“I loved it so much that when I got too old for my two-wheeler, I went to three!” my grandpa joked.
Every year in June, my grandpa, my dad and his brother, and family friends bike from Toledo, Ohio to Cincinnati, Ohio. My grandpa closely supervises their constant pedaling from the seat of his three-wheeled motorcycle. And each year the men come riding into town smiling, laughing, and with a fat stack of pictures to go along with their many stories of their ride. The smiles on their faces say it all: that ride was freedom.
Truth be told, I struggled to come up with a good way to sum up what freedom meant to me. The thing I learned while beginning this essay, is that there isn’t one, perfect way to describe it.
All of the wacky and fantastic adventures that I have been on: going to China on a People to People trip not knowing anyone, skydiving, bungee jumping, rock climbing — that is freedom.
Every smile.
Every laugh.
A spontaneous midnight game of flashlight tag with 70 other random people at a high school.
It is all freedom.
I took to social media outlets like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat to see what freedom meant to others:
My friend from the Marines said that freedom is the “sacrifice of my brothers and sisters.”
A friend from high school said, “Pursuing ideas out of mind and into the physical realm.”
One guy said, “Doing the will of God.”
The list didn’t stop there, it kept going. Some with the generic “the ability to do what I want when I want” line (my parents and a few relatives), others stood with the idea to make mistakes. Others simply put freedom as being able to live their lives as they see fit.
Either way, social media proved both helpful and even more confusing. I had felt like I went four steps back in summing up what the elusive word, “freedom” means. However, I also felt like I went forward from all the wonderful responses I received.
I learned that freedom is not a simple definition. Google gave the one definition: the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. But that didn’t help much.
Some viewpoints of freedom, I agreed with. Others…I didn’t. That’s what I learned. Ultimately, freedom is open. It is an open road with miles to go. It is an open trail ready to be explored. It is an open (and blank) Word doc with a story to be said. But most importantly, it is an open definition. Freedom means many things to me, just like it means many things to many different people.
You are free to acknowledge the freedoms within your own life and interpret them however you’d like. (See what I did there?) That’s the beauty of it.
What I ultimately learned about myself and freedom is that it is the reverse of what I initially thought. Freedom isn’t solely in adventure. Adventure is in freedom, whatever that adventure may be.