I recently commented that at 77 I am living the “free range” life.

Needless to say, the looks I received were, let’s say, quizzical, at best, and often followed by the classical eye rolls.

Let me put this in context. As I look back over my somewhat long life, I am trying to put it in perspective. I suppose Freud or Jung would have described it differently, but for the sake of those among us who have lived a more rural life at some point in time, we understand “free range.”

Three Stages of Human Life (as I see it)

The first stage is similar to the life of a caged chicken. That’s the time in our lives when we are placed in our cribs or those playpens that keep us safe from unintentional self-harm.

Our second life stage could be called cage-free. We are old enough to roam around the entire house, no longer confined to cribs or pens, and often out of the range of sight of our parents. We can wander from room to room and make a few decisions for ourselves— like what to drink from the refrigerator or whether we prefer a peanut butter sandwich with grape or strawberry jam. It can be a false sense of freedom, because our choices are still somewhat confined and often require permission from someone with more authority than we have been granted.

As an adult, we don’t ask permission in this cage-free lifestyle, but we do feel obligated (and I mean that in the best sense) to let someone know what we are considering before taking action.

The free-range life opens all the doors, both literally and figuratively. We are free to live in the world, to make choices about just about everything, and to own those choices, for better or worse. We venture into the world on our own terms, come what may.

Rinse, Repeat, Recycle

Life isn’t linear, no matter what we wish to believe. OMG! How many times have I heard people talk about the timeline of their lives, as if once they escaped the cage and got out of the house, all that lay ahead was the open road?

Living free range can be liberating, sometimes lonely, and occasionally scary. There is nothing more liberating than deciding to eat breakfast for dinner or perhaps skipping breakfast altogether, sleeping in until nine or ten on a weekday, or staying up past bedtime to write one more paragraph. Life often becomes serendipitous. Occasionally, it looks like a disaster. But the point of living free range is that you make all the decisions.

Most of us live a cage-free life. Some of us are married and share the decision-making with a spouse. Depending on the spouse, that can be a good thing. In other words, you don’t run through life willy-nilly, darting about without consideration for your partner. (If you are married and feeling caged, well, it’s time to rethink that choice.)

Some of us have reached the age where living free range seems a little too free. We want shared responsibility — that voice of reason that questions our choices, that encourages us to look at things from both sides rather than picking the next shiny object only because it shines on the surface. Maybe it isn’t the same as being cage-free, but it’s always nice to have a family member or friend who will speak the truth when you ask for advice, the one who has the courage to say, “Maybe you should rethink that.” (My choice to rethink anything, even when so advised, is my free range voice talking to me.)

Several of the old ladies and I have talked about enjoying the freedom to come and go without checking in or out with anyone, to eat and drink whatever we want whenever we want without consideration for another person’s preferences, and to let the laundry pile up until necessity dictates a trip to the laundry room. But the truth is all of us condition our love of freedom upon one thing. We would all be willing to be ranged in, if and only if, we could have him back in our lives for one more day.