• Imagination

Marc Chagall The Birthday 1915. Wikimedia Commons

In this, the second part of my free spirit post, the emphasis is on the joy of having such a liberated outlook on life….. and on developing one’s imagination, which is a vital quality to have in order to feel free, hopeful and creative.

“I have fallen in love with the imagination. And if you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere, and it can do anything.”

Alice Walker.

“Lock your libraries if you choose to; there isn’t a lock, bolt, or gate that you’ll be able to put on my mind.”

Virginia Woolf.

“The brain is wider than the sky.”

Emily Dickinson

Imagination enables us to have the freedom to wander outside the usual boundaries and strictures of life, to break the rules of time and place, to defy gravity, to float, to fly, to soar.

Over The Town – Marc Chagall.1918. Wikioo.

“Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled—
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.”

Mary Oliver

“The man who cannot visualize a horse galloping on a tomato is an idiot.”

Andre Breton

Imagination, Confidence, Freedom and Self-Sufficiency.

“My imagination will get me a passport to hell one day.”

John Steinbeck

Imagination can enable us to be self-contained, to function more independently and confidently. If we trust it, we will find that we are less bothered about what people think of us.

“Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself- and thus make yourself indispensable.”

André Gide

We will discover that we are unique and that within us is a whole world of possibilities.

“Adventure is not outside man; it is within.”

George Eliot

Our imagination helps us to develop our own ideas and thoughts and to risk departing from socially accepted norms and expectations, that is, to be free-spirited.

Marc Chagall – Cow with a Parasol [1946]. Gandalf’s Gallery. Flickr.

• Holding Onto A Child’s Free Spirit. 

“What did you do as a child that made the hours pass like minutes? Herein lies the key to your earthly pursuits.”

Jung

“As a child, what captivated me was reading the poems myself and realizing that there was a world without material substance which was nevertheless as alive as any other.”

Mary Oliver

During childhood, everything is new and inspiring. The zest for life, the excitement, the energetic, uninhibited, exuberant freedom of a happy child is a joy to witness.

Children at the beach – Joaquin Sorolla Y Bastida. 1899. Wikioo.

Can we hold onto this spark of childhood free-spiritedness, whilst channelling it into adult life and work?

Childhood fantasies and excitement can be transformed into something equally beautiful…and lifelong. Following our passions, allowing ourselves to light up with free spiritedness and creativity, can mean that we will hold onto this capacity to be fascinated and amazed.  Some succeed in doing this…

“The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age…”

Aldous Huxley

For many of us, however, as we grow, sadly, the novelty often wears off. The aspects of life that excited us become less interesting with repeated exposure. Reality creeps in and the daily routine of work and making money faces us.

We put on a social mask and lose our youthful naivety. We meet disappointment and loss. We become aware of our mortality. Apathy, indifference, hopelessness, lethargy, passivity- these are all the opposite of free-spiritedness. They are also some of the symptoms of depression.

• Being Aware Of The Importance Of Keeping The Spirits Up As An Adult.

Help to regain some of our free-spiritedness may be found in different kinds of psychotherapy, or in talking to a trusted friend or mentor.

Being with another who is brimming with passion and vitality for an idea, a cause, work, a book or a painting, is an infectious experience. It is helpful to be with people who are free-spirited, who can rekindle the zest and fervour for life that many of us had as children.

We can also work on focussing on feelings of gratitude, appreciating what we do have and developing aspects of ourself and our life in which we might experience joy.

In difficult times or good, we can also, for a short while, lose ourselves in imaginative- and hopeful- reverie.

Amadeo Modigliani-  Reverie. 1914. Wikimedia Commons.

“Active imagination requires a state of reverie, half-way between sleep and waking.”

Carl Jung

Reverie – Cecile Walton. 1921. Wikioo

“Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.”

Gloria Steinem

‘Leaps of imagination’ require hope, and also courage, the courage to take risks to create a reality from our beginning thoughts and ideas. 

Imagination unlocks doors in our minds; it allows us to hope for our future and make plans that take us beyond the present. Imagination and hope go hand in hand, in that both require having constructive ideas and also planning for the possibility of their future implementation.

“Hope is often misunderstood. People tend to think that it is simply passive wishful thinking: I hope something will happen but I’m not going to do anything about it. This is indeed the opposite of real hope, which requires action and engagement.”

Jane Goodall

• The Creative Free Spirit

Vincent van Gogh – Irises (1889) Wikimedia Commons.

“Normality is a paved road, it’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow.”

Vincent Van Gogh.

A free spirit is not aimless; it has intention and knows well what it wants. Free spirited people are often pioneers; they take calculated risks and can dare to lead others, inspiring them to venture into exciting and uncharted waters.

This is not immaturity or irresponsibility, but freedom, the freedom to be different, to create, to have our own thoughts and ideas, to take ‘the road less travelled.’

This is a kind of awakening, or re-awakening, of the freedom of spirit that we all once had…

“When you start to do the things that you truly love, it wouldn’t matter whether it is Monday or Friday; you would be so excited to wake up each morning to work on your passions.”

Edmond Mbiaka

The Sheltered Path – Claude Monet. Wikioo.

“How wrong we are to ignore our hearts to follow the familiar path.”

Nikki Rowe

I repeat, such free-spiritedness is infectious. It spreads to those around us, enabling others to experience some of our freedom and zest for life.

It is invigorating to be with people who can ‘relight our fire.’ Such creative energy tends to be very compelling and can boost our mood.

What Freedom! – Ilya Yefimovich Repin. 1903. Wikioo.

(This painting portrays two students dancing in the waves after finishing their examinations.)

“The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it – basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.”

Charles Bukowski.

• “Ladies,’ ‘Difficult’ Women, Wildness and Wolves.

Jeune Fille Au Piano. Cezanne. Wikimedia Commons.

“Though her soul requires seeing, the culture around her requires sightlessness. Though her soul wishes

to speak its truth, she is pressured to be silent.”

Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Deep inside, hidden from view, women through the ages have harboured, and repressed, all kinds of strong thoughts and feelings about attitudes that have kept them trapped. They have felt totally unable to reveal their free-spirited souls. Many lost touch with their real feelings beneath the pressure of domesticity and under the weight of societal and familial disapproval if they dared even consider moving out of their assigned, stereotypical, gender-roles.

Women have had to be gentle, soft and ‘feminine,’ counterbalancing the male ‘toughness’ and cultural permission, perhaps encouragement, for men to be sweary and loudly aggressive. This is not only hard on women; men too have been socialised to hide their emotions, mostly the gentler feelings, and, of course, never to show their tears, or even have them.

( Question: If women need to run with wolves, what do men need to do? I think this will be the subject for a future post.)

“Within every woman there is a wild and natural creature, a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing.”

Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Today, women especially have felt freer than in the past to let go of their inhibitions and to reject outdated and patriarchal principles about how women ‘should’ be.

In days gone by, and, sadly, often still today, women might be seen as needing to be ‘ladylike,’ to ‘behave’ with decorum, be obedient, contain or deny their feelings, not be outspoken or contentious etc., etc., etc…. If they risk showing their anger, or express different, strong ideas or feelings, some women may be labelled difficult, ‘hormonal,’ mad, or hysterical.

“Courage is a virtue appreciated in a male but considered a defect in our gender. Bold women are a threat to a world that is badly out of balance, in favour of men.”

Isabel Allende

“People don’t like what they consider to be a mouthy woman, but what they really mean is a woman with

an opinion. They think women should just shut up.”

urbanartcore.eu. Angry Woman by Pabo, Flickr.

“It actually doesn’t take much to be considered a difficult woman. That’s why there are so many of us.”
 
 Jane Goodall

The anger of women has actually brought about much social change; anger can highlight and pinpoint exactly where radical new awareness is necessary, focussing a much-needed spotlight on injustices related to, for example, sexism and racism.

The very recent incident that illustrates this involved overt racism at the palace, when a black British charity Chief Executive was repeatedly questioned by a palace aide about where she was “really” from and where “her people” were from.

“It is essential that you become aware of the light, power, and strength within each of you, and that you learn to use those inner resources in service of your own and others’ growth.”

 Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

The appropriately controlled anger, and the courage, clarity and freedom to speak out, of Ngozi Fulani, has again highlighted the existence of such racism in the palace, and backed up the experiences of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.

“Be empowered to tell your story.”

Germany Kent

• Experiencing Free-Spiritedness : Letting Go.

Letting go of restrictions and inhibitions can be a joyful and freeing experience. In her wonderful book ‘Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype,’ Clarissa Pinkola Estés describes how women have lost touch with their freer, wild side, and been restricted and prevented from being openly themselves.

“Why do women keep trying to bend and fold themselves into shapes that are not theirs? I must say, from years of clinical observation of this problem, that most of the time it is not because of deep-seated masochism or a malignant dedication to self-destruction or anything of that nature. More often it is because the woman simply doesn’t know any better. She is unmothered.”

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, ‘Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype.’

Estés highlights the importance of women regaining the ability to trust their intuition, to value their innate strength and wisdom. Wild Women are free to be themselves, proud of their free-spiritedness, full of life, aware of themselves and the world, giving, nurturing, sometimes fierce and protective, but only when necessary.

“Wolf and Woman” by Nikita Gill

“Some days
I am more wolf
than woman
and I am still learning
how to stop apologizing
for my wild”

The Dance –Marc Chagall. Wikioo.

“When I feel like dancing, I dance. I don’t care if anyone else is dancing or if everyone else is laughing at me. I dance.”

Rachel Danson

Beryl Cook – Dancing Ladies. Gandalf’s Gallery. Flickr.

“There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.”

Michel de Montaigne

“You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.”

Ogden Nash

© Linda Berman.

This blog is totally non profit-making. As a retired psychotherapist with 30 years experience, I write both for my own self-expression and to help others.

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