Bit by Bit - Chapter 12, Part 28

Trey Smith

If what you have gotten has gotten you into trouble, then can you really be said to have gotten something? If so, then the pigeons and doves in their cage have also gotten hold of something. With likes and dislikes, sounds and colors you cripple what is on the inside; with leather caps and snipe-feathered bonnets, batons stuck in belts and sashes trailing, you cramp what is on the outside. The inside hemmed in by pickets and pegs, the outside heaped with wraps and swathes, and still you stand in this tangle of wraps and swathes and declare that you have gotten hold of something? If so, then the condemned men with their chained wrists and manacled fingers, the tiger and the leopard in their pens and prisons have also gotten hold of something!
~ Burton Watson translation ~

Each of us is a prisoner in a prison of our own making. We each wrestle with our own demons. From my perspective, the first step is to recognize that we are both the prisoner AND the jail keeper!

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