A Caged Bird’s Longing
Gilded Cage Print — Sara Riches (Saatchi Art)“The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky
If we look at it in a certain way, we are all prisoners, we are all imprisoned from birth. We are imprisoned by responsibilities, expectations, attachments, and societal confines. Life and living itself is a way of being imprisoned. That’s why there’s a great belief in people that one attains true peace only after death. But there is a certain beauty in being imprisoned.
The reason most us don’t realize we are being confined is because it feels natural to be confined, after generations of evolution we have reached where we are now, an era where everything is available yet no one is knowledgeable, from learning to survive, we evolved to doing things which will gain us a temporary rush of adrenaline. From hunting for food and fighting for survival to being offended by trivial matters, we have grown, or have we? Evolving is good, but not at the cost of losing our basic human instincts of survival.
There is a certain freedom in being confined, in being caged from our actual freedom. The first upside is safety, we are safe to an extent in our confines, second is the feeling of belonging, when we are confined into a community, we do have the feeling of belonging, which makes life easier. There might be more, but the real beauty of life is not in remaining safe in the confines or staying where you feel like you belong. It is in exploring the unexplored aspects.
“The ship is safest when it’s in port, but that’s not what ships were built for.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Pilgrimage
To be a prisoner doesn’t mean one has to be arrested, well that’s a different aspect of life altogether. The real prisoners one should pity are those who do not know they are imprisoned, and the warden of their prison is their own consciousness.
A caged bird that doesn’t fly away when the gates are opened is not just caged physically, it is being caged mentally as well. It does not know the beauty of flying, it is confined by the comfort of having food brought to it, and by the satisfaction it gives to its humans by singing.
Well, who in their right mind would fly away and struggle for food and water every hour? Who in their right mind would commit such a sordid act?
The moment this question arrives is when the bird loses its basic insticnt and quality of being a bird. And you, dear reader know that I am not just talking about birds and cages here.
A caged bird that has tasted the sweetness of freedom and flying will never be comfortable with its confinement, it waits for the right moment to escape and flies away at the first chance it gets to escape. We are confined too, the question is, are we ready to fly? Are we willing to fly? And do what makes us feel free?
This is not just a question of spirituality or morality, and the answer will never be a simple yes and no.
~ C. Madan
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