On Glass Cages
I look in front of me and I see the world beyond, the road ahead, the pavement my feet are anxious to tread. My thirsty gaze drinks it all in, but my fingertips know what holds me back. An unseen barrier filters through the vision of what lays before me, yet denies me passage to continue the journey.
In reality I’m free, but I see the fish in front of me is not. He swims in earnest, agitated circles, but does he know what I know? Does he understand his fate in the bowl, or has he forgotten already?
Glass jars hold many objects, from swimming life to canned goods, their walls are both sanctuaries as well as cages. In many ways, I feel as if I stand behind their transparent walls myself -- perhaps as if drifting in a bottle in an open sea, tossed upon the waves of day-to-day experience -- or else sitting still in a panic, or banging against the glass, longing to break free and move. Some may consider the boundaries of a jar and think of safety and peace. I do not.
When I think of glass itself I often shudder, simply because the idea of seeing potential yet knowing it is not mine to reach is harrowing.
But I am not talking about many of the social barriers that perhaps you, reader, would associate with this scenario. For myself I do not speak of stereotypical “glass ceilings”, equal rights or free choice only; rather, I relate to the freedom of speech. Just days ago I discovered the limitations that come from a world of glass barricades, where people fight for the illusion of freedom but lock away those who have deeper perception by staying them from speaking out against the glass. I remember the tremors that coursed through my body as I realized how silenced I felt, incapable of being heard clearly by all those who chose not to hear, or else couldn’t for the sake of the jar that separated them from me. I felt as though my desperate grasp on reality, leaving sweaty fingerprints smeared on the window that blocked my words, was slowly tearing to shreds.
The obstacle I speak of exudes a wider view than that which is seen by a goldfish, a message in a bottle, or even a freethinker. I find myself trapped in a cage that shows me the world, as it disintegrates before my eyes, while I and the people who, somewhere, stand beside me, are forced to watch helplessly; though we know what we could say and do if only we were truly free.
This cage is not one typically considered, yet it exists. Even more startling, it traps those outside its walls as well. The words I am “free to speak” do not often break past the thickness of the glass, leaving those who lie beyond with deaf ears and single-minded thoughts. My question is then, what freedom do we really have? What are we losing? And what are we truly fighting for?
If we are ever to answer these we need to learn to see the glass and not through it. For that is the key to setting the fish free, to cracking the code from the bottle, or to hearing those who are simply not heard anymore in today’s society.
