Break the chains…

It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere. -Voltaire

I’m not too sure who this Voltaire fella is; I think he may have invented the first electric car back in the fifties or something, but I agree wholeheartedly with his quote.

When dad and Zach let me out of the crate, they had no choice but to leave me there while they rode the bikes home to get the truck; I had no gaurantee that they would or would not return, and I remember resigning myself to the fact that I would die as I had lived, alone.

Although the crate was a horrible symbol of what I had endured, I knew nothing else, so that’s where I lay, beside my former prison cell, when I heard the truck approaching. If I had been in better physical condition I may have been more apt to help myself, but the combination of despair, fatigue, and depression made me choose the familiarity of the crate, however unpleasant, over the hope of a new life.

Now that I’m queen of the Casa, I can look back and see that the crate is simply an analogy of other areas in our lives; substitute my crate with your cubicle at work, with a toxic relationship, with an addiction, or any other example where we decide, consciously or subconsciously, to stay in a situation that it would be infinitely more preferable to leave?
How many times have we heard of someone losing a job only to find the freedom to explore new opportunities, opportunities that were impossible to imagine while still mired in the minutiae of the daily grind?

As we found out while dealing with mom’s cancer, nothing is as bad as worrying about. I resolve to no longer be controlled by fear of the unknown; Life is too short and the list of good things I have yet to experience too long to waste on what “might happen”; I have incredible places and people yet to visit, hopefully this summer from the back of the motorcycle, but the method is unimportant; the key word here is “hope”…
hope is a choice that only you can make, but you can allow others to help you make that choice, and in turn help others by sharing your success stories; and we all know it’s all about the stories!