Quote of the Day: Trapped in Slavery

There was a power outage at a department store yesterday. Twenty people were trapped on the escalators. --Steven Wright We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it. --Tennessee Williams

These two quotations epitomize the absurdity and fear that sometimes dominate the lives we are blessed with, as well as the hopelessness that we must be vigilant against if we are to be free.

Steven Wright’s quotation made me laugh, but it is so very true: how often have you felt trapped in your life, a slave to your perceptions and understandings, just like a group of people stuck on an escalator? Our lives are dominated by assumptions and expectations: if we have a job we don’t like, we feel we have no way out for an endless number of reasons; if we are struggling in a relationship, we don’t know if and how we should mend it or leave it; if we have gained an inordinate amount of weight, we feel trapped in our bodies.

But are we really trapped?

We are slaves to our lifetime experiences and understandings because we can’t, or don’t allow ourselves, to see beyond them. We are slaves because we don’t know that we are actually free. As Tennessee Williams suggests, we see no way out of our situation. Our fear and ambivalence about taking control of our lives dominate our reality.

This is the way that I believe most people on the Left live their lives. They are slaves to their perceptions and fears: Donald Trump will destroy the country. Inflation will last forever. Crime is impossible to overcome. These people have locked themselves in their own personal fortresses to protect themselves from “enemies” when they don’t understand that their worst enemies are themselves. They’ve even built a moat around the fortress just to ensure that they are protected from the unexpected. It rarely occurs to them that they don’t have to be slaves to their fear and illusions.

They only have to open their eyes, let down the fortress gate, sail across the moat, and walk into a world full of opportunity and blessings.