Has anybody found it ironic that though everybody is technically free - truly we are the only ones who control our own movements and thoughts - we willingly allow ourselves to be placed under the proverbial shackles and bondage of so many others for the sake of an imposed hierarchy? 

It's one of the reasons I personally can't really believe in placing blame on somebody when it effects me, and why the thought of "He/She/They/etc made me do/say it" seems utterly ridiculous.

Yes, there are instances where it is certainly to our benefit to entrust our actions and thoughts in the hands of others.  Teachers at school, parents and mentors, respectable other loved ones.. When we allow their influence to change us for the better, our lives become more efficient, enjoyable, fulfilled and productive.



There is, however, a dark.. gaping chasm of difference between "influence" and "control."







Realizing when one has breached this distance and, even moreso, realizing that this shouldn't be so - this becomes one of the tricks that we all must attune ourselves to to best avoid entrapment.  Such chains that begin to shackle us to the ground, leaving us to burble last breaths into mud instead of thrusting us into the air where we all so desperately long to be must be relentlessly severed.


Ah, and that is where the strength of our feelings of self-worth come in.  The depth and brevity of this feeling is the key factor of just how well we are able to fight against such things, if we even get into this situation at all.


I remember having coffee and dessert with my friend, Dan Strang, late one night at a great place on Broadway, and he asked me if I thought that all humans were equal.  I had sipped my mocha slowly, trying to avoid the whipped cream from pushing itself into my face while I contemplated.  A moment later, I stated slowly, "I think that if we were to take everybody as we are now, nobody is equal.  However, in terms of our potential to become, that is where we are all on equal ground."

In other words, it is in our futures and our willingness to grow that we can all reach the same stratospheric height.  We all have the innate ability to somehow overcome those that we may feel oppressed by - if we would only realize the true worth of our ability, which in this sense has the beginnings of being endless.



Though there is a seeming stability and ease with relinquishing our free will to others, and it certainly feeds our base human trigger to blame somebody else, but a life of such slavery is both an illusion and a poison.  You are capable of rising above!  You are able to survive and even more than that, achieve!



Love Yourself : Break Free.



Regards,
Sprout!