To be free

Theodore Vaughn
Nov 8 · 3 min read

I knew not to work too much. It can be tough to listen to your gut when everyone does something different. But I always knew and I know now. One had only to look around. There was not a lot of truth, rich or poor. I knew it best sitting on the floor with my daughter. I would watch her play and be pleased by the simplest things. She would look at me and my old burdens would disperse, not as a sacrifice but as an instinct. I knew she was more important than any one thing or many things combined. She was temporary. Seeing her was more important than how I was seen.

I knew it was mostly random anyway, and that merit didn’t have much to do with it. I would see men and women who worked hard and men and women who didn’t and they all had something of the same. Even when I was made to feel abashed, or less than, I carried my own thought and feeling with me. I didn’t listen to the country because the country wasn’t happy or moral. These gleaming things, we could do without them. The unluxurious versions did mostly the same thing and having them instead let me see my daughter more.

And now and then my wife would bake for us and she was happy and home with us. I would watch amber rays light her face through the panes and I would think in ways other men didn’t. Our backyard was very small and we often went to the park. We would walk and sit and talk and observe other people. My girls would gaze at the fuzzy dogs who were lazy and happy. The dogs would drink merrily from a communal bowl while the owners on the other end of the leashes frowned at their phones.

My wife tried to be simple, and I did too, and we knew that the things that claim to simplify never do. Removal was the only simplification and freedom was the only happiness. Having less and loving it and having time to love was all. To work only in support of these things and never for its own sake was the only way to live truly. I would never say it was perfect or effortless, but we had more than those who looked at us like we had less. The men who worked the most had the least time and were the least interesting to talk to. They could talk about only one thing. I felt that no matter how hard we worked we would die all the same. I knew even if I worked harder than everyone else it would bring me more stuff and not more time. To be rich required more luck than work and anyway it came with a set of heavy fetters. No one else seemed to care about this, and if they did they kept very quiet about it.

But the little things my daughter saw I saw and wanted to see, and I had the freedom to see them. And even now, with all I regret, I don’t regret the work I missed. I know other men who went into the ground with resentment from their children and they were called successful. I knew that wanting more was wrong because it was forgetful. We had a warm house and a car that worked and not much else. The country’s turmoil and blindness had always come from wanting.

Now in the small evenings I sit with my wife on a porch which will one day belong to someone else and then many others. We hear the evening bugs in the rustle of the trees and we watch the light die happily. She looks at me, her face free and sure and full of starry light. Our daughter will soon be here for dinner. We see her every day.

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