Somewhere in the world there is a wall, and on this wall are these words of wisdom “Free Your Mind, and Your Ass Will Follow”*.  I’m surmising that that’s ‘ass’ as in ‘arse’, not ass as in donkey.  Evidently, these words of wisdom have been written by an American, or someone who has learned American English.  Why Americans refer to their arses as donkeys, I don’t know – a question for another day, perhaps.

Back to the writing on the wall.  I have read many times that the road to happiness is to follow my bliss, do what I love, and imagine what I’d do if money was no object.  This is where things get a little amusing.  I have reached sixty, and far from being sorted, those things are still in constant flux.  I’m moderately successful in the material world, but my bliss is fluid and subject to change at any moment.  As a child of the New Age era, I bought into a lot of well-intentioned – and as it turns out, conflicting – advice about how to find myself, and ……well, here I am.  I think many of us got tangled in it, rather than got free.  Putting two and two together, I’m thinking that freeing my mind might help me find my bliss – and my arse, by all accounts.

So, I’m sifting through my mind, and looking at ways I can free it up.  Turns out, there’s probably quite a lot there that’s holding my arse back.  There’s a shock.  Like most of us, I suspect, venturing into my mind isn’t the first thing I can think of as something fun to do.  There’s stuff there that I’d rather not know about.  However, there are also a few nice surprises, which serve as a reminder that I’m still good to go in a lot of ways.  As much as I would like to unload what I don’t want, it’s there for a reason (obscure though it may be) and very tenacious.  I decide that the best thing to do is identify the main obstacles and/or fears.  It doesn’t take long to discover that I have created a very efficient system of obstacles and fears in my mind.  They appear to be a one-size-fits-all, and I can use them for almost anything.  I don’t need new ones for every event.  That’s a big time saver.

I think of three things I’d like to do, but which I hold back on doing – and lo and behold, the first obstacles that pop into my mind for each of them, are the same self-created obstacles for all three things.  I won’t bare my soul here about what they are, as no ordinary person needs to hear that much confession.  My sister will probably be able to make a good guess.  She knows where most of the skeletons are buried.

You know what else?  Some of them are just plain stupid – which doesn’t make them any less difficult to evict from residence.  A stern talking to, or an eviction notice isn’t going to do it.  They’ve been there for a long time and are quite settled, thank you very much.  So, I’m deciding right here and now that I’m not going to do battle with those obstacles.  I’m not going to give them that much energy, just so they can swell up with importance.  It’s actually quite tiring keeping them fed and housed at the best of times.  They can stay if they really, really want, but they’ll have to downsize.  Don’t worry, I reassure them, we’re sure to still meet up from time to time, or I might catch a glimpse of you out of the corner of my eye now and then, but from here on in, you’re in a different neighbourhood.

And just like that the obstacles disappeared, my mind was free, and I lived happily ever after.

Now, where’s my donkey.

• Free Your Mind… and Your Ass Will Follow is the second studio album by American funk band Funkadelic, released in July 1970