The Prison with No Bars

There is beauty in the crevices and cracks of the prison with no bars. Long after the bars were torn down, the foundation remains.

We learn at a very young age to start building our own prisons. Bar by bar, we lock ourselves away until we can’t even remember who we were when we came into this world. We like our prisons. We find comfort in the ignorance of who we were. Familiarity in the box in which we live. Then one day we start to see the bars. We spent years building the prison but forgot we were locked away. Until the bars start to show themselves again. We start to feel like we are in prison instead of our familiar place. Something deep inside of us is calling out, longing to be free. We don’t recognize it, but can’t ignore it. So we start the painful work of tearing the bars down. It is hard work. Manual work. We sweat. Our fingernails bleed. We cry. Until finally the bars have all been torn down. We think we are free. We stand there in our freedom in the prison with no bars. But we don’t move from the space. Our feet stay firmly planted and the illusion of no bars makes us believe our work is done. It’s not. That thing deep inside is still calling out, crying out. Speaking of freedom. We get mad. Does this thing not realize all of the work that was done to remove the bars? We are free! Free in the prison with no bars. It is at this moment, fear strikes. We are exposed. The bars are no longer there. They can no longer serve as our excuse to be trapped in the prison we spent years building. Now we are standing here by choice. Choice? We never believed in choice. Only bars and fate. Fate, who accepts his role as mankind’s scapegoat. But here choice is staring us in the face, demanding to know why we never used her power. She has always been there. But we never looked her way. That thing inside calling out is getting stronger. Pushing us. We can’t take it anymore, so we take a step. And then another. We don’t know what’s going to happen next, but we can’t stop. We are moving forward and suddenly we are no longer standing in the middle of the prison with no bars. Fear explodes. In that moment we realize we have been holding our breath, so we breathe. A deep full breath. All of the chains, baggage and weight we have been holding onto inside the prison with no bars falls off. We realize we can’t remember the last time we have taken a full breath. We have been sipping just enough air to exist every since that moment in our childhood we starting building our prison. We take another full breath and remember. We remember the person we were when we came into this world. We remember our purpose. We remember how to breath. We remember how to be. And for the first time since we started building that prison, we are fully alive. We are free. We smile and take another step.