Finding Freedom

I stood between the train cars, wind blowing in my hair, watching the Mexican countryside flash by. With each passing hour the train carried me further and further away from my obligations, bills, job, and the people who knew me.

In twelve more hours, my wife and two children and I would get off the train, ride a bus for several hours, then take a boat to a place where no one knew us. A place where I would receive no phone nor electric bills, because there would be neither electricity nor phones.

Nor were there any roads in the small village that would be our home, so there would be no automobile to care for, no insurance fees or gas expense. The palm-thatched palapa in which we lived cost $150 per year. I would live off the land with my hands, my machete, and a crude Mexican-made fishing device to supply most of our food.

I was finally free! I had left obligations, the constraints of societal norms, and the expectations of others behind me. My time and my life were my own.

Today, I have seven children. I work 12 to 14 hours a day. I have even less time than money. My obligations to family, work, and community are greater than anything I left behind when I boarded the train to Mexico. Yet, there is a sense of freedom in these obligations that surpasses the most idyllic, sun-filled days spent fishing in a dugout canoe on the Pacific Ocean.

A hungry person is not free, but enslaved by the need to end the growling in his stomach. In those Mexican days, I was hungry for the connection and fulfillment I thought I would find in this primitive, natural environment. The freedom and pleasure I discovered were wonderful, but only a diversion from the goal that I had set to achieve.

Late at night, sitting in our palapa, the kids tucked into their hanging bamboo beds, the kerosene lantern casting its glow around the makeshift table, dimly illuminating the palm fronds that surrounded our home, I would still feel the same emptiness that had taken me to Mexico. And though I would not dwell on the thoughts and feelings that crept into consciousness in the silence of the night, I knew that the true purpose of this journey was not being achieved. I was still starving for meaning in life.

My quest had taken me through many experiences and investigations, much study and exploration. It was a search that had gone from the mountaintops of Oregon to the jungles of Mexico and many places in between. But I didn't find freedom from this hunger until I reached the gray, workaday city of Milwaukee. It was in Milwaukee that I discovered Chabad and Torah Judaism.

One cannot be truly free unless one knows who he really is, what he really wants and what he is meant to do. Regardless of how fantastic or romantic, dramatic or adventurous the masks I wore, they were only masks, and not my real face.

I am not a machete-carrying Mexican peasant working the land. I am a Jew connected to G-d through mitzvot. When I am being who I truly am and fulfilling my purpose in this world, the yokes of worldly obligation are no longer the markers of whether or not I am free. They become the tools with which I exercise my freedom.

I need my car to do Mitzva errands. I must earn money to give my children the education they need to be Torah-loving people. The telephone is vital to my work and my ability to communicate words of Torah or help a friend. The rent I pay (more dollars per week than the annual cost of the palapa in Mexico) provides a home of Torah, mitzvot and good deeds, with warmth and love and nurturing for my children in a community and environment that strengthens, supports and encourages the values on which I base my life.

The adventure I seek is found in the constant exploration of who I am and who I can be as I stretch further and further in my quest to become the best parent, husband, friend, Jew and chasid I can be.

Today, my soul no longer aches. It is nourished by a connection with G-d and a sense of His presence in my daily hours. My hunger is filled, rather than diverted by constantly shifting adventures and pleasures. My life, thank G-d, is filled with purpose, satisfaction and a profound love of my family.

My children are not running barefoot through the sand, but walking sure-footed through life, feet firmly planted in Torah and a way of life that cherishes the finest and highest of Divine and human qualities.

I don't fish, have little time for vacations, and carry a tallit bag rather than a machete. I serve G-d to the best of my limited ability.

And I have never been more free.