We imprison ourselves each time we restrain our natural expression because we’re afraid that it won’t be appreciated, or celebrated.
Our need for approval or validation soon becomes our greatest crutch in life, until eventually it becomes our prison.
We decorate its walls with images and scraps that honour the past, sometimes recalling moments of joy, but often also anchoring us in moments of pain.
We hold those mementoes up as trophies and garlands that need to be revered by others before we’re willing to set them back down, believing that unless someone else knows our pain, we cannot let it go.
Our need to be comforted about the aches and losses of the past is not because we need to be comforted, but because we need to feel as if someone cares for us…for what we’re hurting about.
It’s not always the hurt that’s important. Often, knowing that someone cares that we’re hurting, and that they care enough to want us to stop hurting, is what shackles us to our past, because letting it go also means that we have no way to test if we’re significant to those around us.
The prisons that protect us from experiencing a beautiful life are often just a single moment away.
Sadly, we most often wait for someone else to create that moment of release for us before we’re willing to love ourselves enough to create it for ourselves.
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Self-imposed prisons of our mind
