WILD FLOWER
PERSONAL
To
live life so freely you hold on to nothing, but live for everything
Last week someone asked me what freedom
meant to me. I lifted my gaze to level with hers and for a moment I willed her
see it in my eyes, because in that instant my mind searched for all the words
it could contrive to define freedom and my throat bubbled with emptiness.
In my mind I pictured my feet moving to
places it wanted to go to, my heart wilfully spread-out and full of
insurmountable love for the strange and the ordinary things. My thoughts filled
with hope for things yet unseen and undone. To voluntarily allow myself to be overwhelmed
by the simple beauty of common joys. To allow myself take in all the falls and
failures and still thrive into the woman I have chosen to be.
I like to think that there is a certain
kind of unquestionable passion that emanates from a place deep inside us and
that it has no limits, but is only inhibited by our insecurities. To live life
so freely you hold on to nothing, but live for everything. You give love with
no expectations and measure because there really is no limit to the amount of
love you can give. To simply bloom tended to by everything and for everything.
The world has taught us the slogan, “to
each their own”; the commonly accepted phrase to claim particular responsibility,
yet it possesses a certain subtle deception to liberate the undertones of
selfishness in a way that makes us think nothing of the act of being selfish.
So we choose whom to give love to and whom not to, whom to pray for and whom
not to, whom to care about and whom not to and we choose to accept this
lifestyle as the appropriate measure of selfishness while we berate and slap
our cheeks at those who do not measure up or those who surpass this ‘appropriate
measure’.
I have tried to train myself to the
socially acceptable notion of specially giving and being specially gifted,
specially loving and being specially loved and I have neither the ability to
carry out each respective pair with sincerity.
I am perhaps what you would call a wild
flower, the type you find in unexpected places with the strangest of
appearances and the unbelonging of a wanderer. I couldn’t sit pretty on a
polished window with the finest of decors in the grandest of bright light and
the purest of water because my roots were designed to wander. I couldn’t bloom
for a specific few because I thrive better in the open air and in the vastness
of grounds.
One of the most beautiful things in life is
being true to one’s self; the sincerity in admitting to a state of being. In
holding onto the broken pieces of yourself you have learnt to chip off and fold
away from the judgemental eyes of society and wearing them like regalia. To be
audaciously and unapologetically an individual, with or without a broken sense
of humour, guffawing or not at the ironic meticulous nonsensicality of a normal
life.
This is what freedom means to me.
I sincerely hope you understand that I write because I must. Even though the internet apparently stops with Instagram and twitter and gossip websites these days, I write because I know that I have to for the sake of my thoughts that desire a means to vent, and for you because I like how your brain muses and muses and keeps coming back here for more musings.
I digress to
allow us take a moment to look back at my marvellously good hair, on a good
hair day.
P.S what does
freedom mean to you?
A hi
nya, with love, x E
Photography
|| Ene Ijato assisted by Titus Zhiri
Creative
directing || Ene Ijato
Styling
|| Ene Ijato
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