I think a lot about freedom these days - not so much about how much I have but more about how little of it I really have.  I don't watch television anymore, don't read newspapers or most magazines, and I don't dig through the various information sources on the internet all that much.  No news is good news, so the old saying goes, but the fact that I don't know what's going on doesn't change anything.  Old age is taking its toll on me these days, and I'm starting to feel like a stranger here.  I'd do something about it, but I'm not free to take action on what really ails me.

Loneliness is something that comes with ageing, and I'm starting to understand where it comes from.  Old people lose their connections to the real world, and that's the one we all must live in.  By real world, I mean the right now world as it is.  Forget how it ought to be because we can't live there.  We have to live here, in the real world, and its a place that's increasingly alien to me.  I've lost my ties to this modern world, and this didn't come about because I don't understand it.  In fact, I understand it all too well . . . and that's mostly why I feel like a stranger here.

Kris Kristopherson's song Me and Bobby McGee has the classic line, "Freedom's just another word for nothin left to lose.  Nothin ain't worth nothin but it's free."  I always thought that with old age came more freedom, like the freedom of not having to go to work or do all the things associated with it.  But the reality of it is that us old folks have less freedom because so much of the real world we live in is unavailable to us.  Oh, it's out there; we just can't get to it anymore.  We're restricted by physical limitations, maybe even mental ones.  I can't watch movies anymore, for instance, because I can't understand the dialogue.  Even if I can hear it, I don't pick up the jargon, the modern age talk.  I can't read most works of fiction because my eyesight is limited, and I get headaches, and I'm sick of trying to find glasses that really work for me.

But, you know, there is one freedom that comes with old age, and maybe it's the kind Kristopherson was talking about in his song.  As I get older, and more disenchanted with the world around me, the less I care.  In fact, I don't really give a shit about much of anything these days, and there's a special kind of freedom in that.  I getting accustomed to being a bungler, clumsy, and forgetful to a flaw.  I'm used to being slow-witted some days, messy, and in pain . . . so used to it that I don't really care anymore.  Oh, I rage against it, curse like hell when I drop something or stumble over things.  But I don't really give a rat's ass anymore . . . and that gives me some freedom I've been longing for.  This all comes from knowing I don't have a lot to lose.  Most of what a younger man could lose is already gone for me.

"So, why don't you have a driver's license, sir?" the officer asks. 

"Well, officer, since I decided to let other folks worry about all that shit, I just don't bother going through all the irritation of getting one," I say.

"But, sir, I'm going to have to write you a ticket," the cop says.

"That's OK, I don't mind. I don't pay 'em anyway."

"But if you don't pay, you just might go to jail."

"That might be good.  Maybe somebody down at the jail knows how to play checkers, and I don't have nobody around to play with these days.  And the food's free down there, ain't it?  And I've got this long list of medicines I'm taking, and somebody'll have to get that for me while I'm in the clink . . . but I don't mind going," I said.

And you know, I had that every discussion not more than a year ago.  The cop just stared at me a few minutes, then shook his head and walked off.  He did tell me to get a license, that he'd have to haul me in the next time . . . but I didn't go to jail, and he didn't write me up.

If you're thirty years old, try doing that.  There's a good lesson in freedom in it.

C. Duhon, 4/19/08