I'm a free-spirit....?

LOL! here is what the dictionary says - "a person with a highly individual or unique attitude, lifestyle, or imagination; nonconformist" - I am divided, a little, within myself about it.

On the one hand I see a person not burdened by the expectations of others - one who takes themselves, in a sense, lightly (in the sense of that "angels can fly because they take themselves lightly" thingy - if you see what I mean) - on the other hand I see Harold Skimpole!

(I have always wanted to take myself - and life - far more lightly, btw.)

What does it mean to you, 'k?

Sounds good. I also doubt littlek is really restrained by what someone else thinks can't be done, or is plain impractical

I think the one word that fits best is "noncomformist." I had too many hangups to be a "free spirit."

D - who is Harold Skimpole?

Thanks for the responses. How do I define it? I dunno. I'll think about it more and respond later this long weekend. What do free spirits do at retirement when they have no pention to live on?

You might try pension.

It's a long weekend over there? I know we have one because it's thanksgiving here Monday, but I don't remember what your holiday is.

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you that people have always called me the same thing and I kind of wondered myself what the true meaning of it was.

Un huh. What I said applies to Montana too. Both have high standards and stick too them, but they decide what the standards are.

:-D

I thought it was a really comfortable bra, feather light but strong and supportive...prolly expensive too....

Columbus Day, we celebrate the man who got lost and refused to ask for directions.

The concept of free spirit is an ideal for me now.
Free spirit, however, prevails here and there.

Here is a little essay on Harold, Little 'k - I am by no means implying this is you! However, this would epitomise for me the dark side of the free spirit!

" The Skimpole Syndrome:
Childhood Unlimited
Paul V. Mankowski


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Copyright (c) 1993 First Things 33 (May 1993): 26-30.

Let me re-introduce you to Mr. Harold Skimpole. Skimpole lives in the pages of Charles Dickens' Bleak House; he made his first appearance 140 years ago, yet those who are acquainted with the principal hierophants of New Age spirituality may receive more than a slight shock of recognition:

He was a bright little creature with a rather large head; but a delicate face and a sweet voice, and there was a perfect charm in him. All he said was so free of effort and spontaneous and was said with such a captivating gaiety, that it was fascinating to hear him talk. . . . Indeed, he had more the appearance in all respects of a damaged young man, than a well-preserved elderly one. There was an easy negligence in his manner, and even in his dress (his hair carelessly disposed, and his neckerchief loose and flowing, as I have seen artists paint their own portraits), which I could not separate from the idea of a romantic youth who had undergone some unique process of depreciation. . . .

Harold Skimpole took a bright disdain for the drudgery of adult life-"I am a child, you know!" he frequently reminds us-and delighted in the innocent pleasures around him. Speaking of himself (far and away his favorite topic) he confessed to


two of the oldest infirmities in the world: one was, that he had no idea of time; the other, that he had no idea of money. In consequence of which he never kept an appointment, never could transact any business, and never knew the value of anything! . . . He was very fond of reading the papers, very fond of making fancy sketches with a pencil, very fond of nature, very fond of art. All he asked of society, was to let him live. That wasn't much. His wants were few. Give him the papers, conversation, music, mutton, coffee, landscape, fruit in the season, a few sheets of Bristol-board, and a little claret, and he asked no more. He was a mere child in the world, but he didn't cry for the moon. He said to the world, "Go your several ways in peace! Wear red coats, blue coats, lawn sleeves, put pens behind your ears, wear aprons; go after glory, holiness, commerce, trade, any object you prefer; only-let Harold Skimpole live!

Thus we are given a prototype of the consummate pluralist, the besotted lover of all creation, the friend of peace, the man who can tolerate anything but intolerance: with malice toward none, with kindness and caring toward all.

The best insight we have into Skimpole's character comes from his encounters with creditors and their agents-what would for another man be called "financial embarrassment"-but of course Skimpole has no capacity to blush for any reason. He lives in the house of a wealthy and indulgent friend; even so, he manages to accumulate spectacular bills. On one occasion the narrator, Esther Summerson, is summoned to Skimpole's room and finds him, to her shock, arrested for debt.


"Are you arrested for much, sir?" I inquired of Mr. Skimpole. "My dear Miss Summerson," said he, shaking his head pleasantly, "I don't know. Some pounds, odd shillings and half-pence, I think, were mentioned."

The sum turns out to be more than twenty-four pounds-a staggering amount for the time, and it devolves on Esther and her friends to satisfy the officer and the debt.


It was a most singular thing [Esther was afterward to reflect] that the arrest was our embarrassment, and not Mr. Skimpole's. He observed us with a genial interest; but there seemed, if I may venture on a contradiction, nothing selfish in it. He had entirely washed his hands of the difficulty, and it had become ours.

Drawing on their own savings, carefully accumulated through much ill- paid labor, Skimpole's acquaintances managed to placate the furious collecting agent, but Skimpole isn't through with him yet. "Did you know this morning, now, that you were coming out on this errand?" Skimpole asked him. "It didn't affect your appetite? Didn't make you at all uneasy?"


"Then you didn't think, at all events," proceeded Mr. Skimpole, "to this effect. 'Harold Skimpole loves to see the sun shine; loves to hear the wind blow; loves to watch the changing lights and shadows; loves to hear the birds, those choristers in Nature's great cathedral. And does it seem to me that I am about to deprive Harold Skimpole of his share in such possessions, which are his only birthright!' You thought nothing to this effect?"

He is assured in emphatic terms that this was not the case.


"Very odd and very curious, the mental process is, in you men of business!" said Mr. Skimpole thoughtfully. "Thank you, my friend. Good night."

Harold Skimpole never quite manages to lose his charm, and yet readers of Bleak House become increasingly appalled by him. He affects unselfishness, but is in reality fanatically, even maniacally, self- centered-existing in the soap bubble of an almost perfect solipsism. He insists in his sunny prattle that he is "a mere child," while he is fact a grotesque parasite: a colossal tick, a leech, a tapeworm with a taste for Mozart, who, it turns out, is childlike in his pursuit of pleasure, but shrewd and willful in his studied neglect of responsibility. His sensibilities are exquisitely tender, and yet he has a talent for causing pain, for making his benefactors feel slightly soiled by their own honest labor. He professes universal tolerance and sweetness to all, though is willing to put his friends through shame, fear, and harm rather than see his own comfort threatened.

The burden of this essay is to demonstrate that the Skimpole Syndrome is alive and well today, particularly (though not exclusively) in the world of religion. I want to show that the churches have been victims of parasites, most often quite charming parasites, and that the exhaustion and despair we see in the faces of our pastors can, to some extent, be attributed to the energy sucked out of their veins by cheerful co- religionists who mock their host even as they grow fat on his livelihood, his patrimony. The difficulty before me-no small one-is to convince you that the good things that our modern-day Skimpoles feast on are as precarious, are bought into being with as much pain and toil, as were the amenities of Bleak House.

The villainy of the Skimpole Syndrome does not consist in its choice of goods: papers, conversation, music, mutton, coffee, landscape, fruit, a little claret-few of us would argue that such things are inherently unwholesome. Nor is genial tolerance-"Go your several ways in peace! . . . go after any object you prefer!"-a bad thing in itself. The problem with Skimpolism is that it ignores, and refuses to acknowledge, the sources and causes of its own good fortune: the enormous human enterprise of toil, commerce, and distribution, the attendant fatigue, risk, worry, and vexation, the requisite virtues of foresight, prudence, honesty, and diligence-all of which are necessary for something as ordinary as a peach or a glove to end up in Skimpole's dining room. For the Skimpoles of this world, the ultimate source of bread is the baker's van, and there is no need to concern oneself with plowing, sowing, weeding, dunging, cutting, threshing, milling, and baking-not to mention the thousands of mercantile transactions, from mortgages to tire rotations-that must be in place, and continually attended to, so that Skimpole might have his honey on toast.

Skimpole believed himself set apart from other men by the fact that his needs were few. Of course, his needs were no fewer than anyone else's; rather, he was distinguished by his ignorance of his debt to prosaic necessities, by his confusing desires with needs, and by pretending that his wants were nobler than those of the multitude.......... (long religious passage)............

In the Skimpole mentality, all the effort required to produce his wants is mere affectation, and as such requires no compensation, and no respect. So Skimpole gives us to understand in narrating a conversation with his unpaid butcher:


"Says he, 'Sir, why did you eat spring lamb at eighteen pence a pound?' 'Why did I eat spring lamb at eighteen pence a pound, my honest friend?' said I, naturally amazed by the question. 'I like spring lamb!' This was so far convincing. 'Well sir,' says he, 'I wish I had meant the lamb as you mean the money!' 'My good fellow,' said I, 'pray let us reason like intellectual human beings. How could that be? It was impossible. You had got the lamb, and I have not got the money. You couldn't really mean the lamb without sending it in, whereas I can, and do, mean the money without paying it!' He had not a word. There was an end to the subject."

"Did he take no legal proceedings?" inquired [Mr. Jarndyce].

"Yes, he took legal proceedings," said Mr. Skimpole, "But, in that, he was influenced by passion, not by reason."...........(more religious material)


Skimpole's worldview is defective not in the things it includes but in the things it leaves out, and the same is true of his contemporary counterparts. They speak of peace and justice and compassion as if the notions themselves were obvious and spontaneous, springing up in the minds of men with no more trouble than the wine and strawberries that appeared on Skimpole's breakfast tray. What they ignore is the overwhelming struggle, the sheer human sacrifice necessary............

Ohhhh yeah, now I remember :-)

That man really should have asked for directions, but then again, maybe it's a good thing that he didn't :-)

Butrfly, What do you expect of a man? At least we're consistent from one generation to the next.

Hey, lighten up. He conned a queen out of her jewels to find a water route to the spices of India. He only thought he found India, never brought back any spices, and she only started to get wise when he came up dry of the fifth trip.

By the way, the day is barely recognized by some 30% of our local population.

littlek my dear, it means you dont want, intend nor wish to be 'like the jones' whomever they may be at that moment...you also are in charge of yourself and your surroundings, you are at peace with yourself and who you are, you take happiness from things non material in nature-somethings perhaps like your admiration of animals and nature and such. In addition to that you accept people for who and what they are and neither question nor condemn their way of life unless you see it hurting a person/place or thing in an unnatural way
or something like that, a combination of parts of the above, or you know, even not a bit of it.

You are an individual. You are not tied down by anything other than those things of your heart and thoughts. You do no harm to those things living except to the point of survival and equal harmony. You look out for the good in the world and
TO HELL WITH THE REST.


I have no idea actually--Im pretty much described as a free spirit myself sometimes and I tend to think its more of a jab than a hug--but, then again, I really dont care either way--so, maybe its just about not caring.

Its all good gal...you're a decent person, a heck of a gal, and fun and friendly so...pthbhtlth who needs labels and definitions...lets not be bound by all that--lets be well..free spirits.

hehehehehehehe

I like that Roger, thanks.

I took a road trip with ma and pa today. A few hours in the car and I asked them what they thought about the phrase free spirit. They answered much like you all and then the topic shifted. We spoke of the wedding they'd been to yesterday - an old friends of the family's 'kid' got hitched. Another of the 'kids' (quotes indicate that these are very full-grown adults, but to the parents kids all the same) was also there. This other kid was very troubled as a teen and young adult. He seems to have come out of that and become a good father and companion to his g.f./wife. But, the word my mother used to describe him as a kid was 'sociopath'. We all stopped talking and I asked - and just how is that different from free-spirit? The discussion continued and was interesting.

Deb's Harold probably doesn't even fit fully into the concept of sociopathology, but maybe leaning more towards that end of the spectrum?

A free spirit can still have a conscience. Sociopaths don't.