I don’t suppose you have ever thought of yourself as a prisoner, but I am sorry to inform you that you most likely are – a prisoner of your own mind. Since the day you were born, you have spent your life trying to make sense of the world and your place in it, even now. As a result, you have constructed meaning about yourself and everything else, lessons learnt that now inform how you understand the world to be. These constructions or schema tend to get stronger, as we seek confirmation with information that seems right, and discount any information that seems wrong to us. What is taking place is the formation of a worldview or perception of reality, a lens for the mind through which we see things.
Unfortunately, just like in the human eye, with time and aging the lens of our mind tends to lose its flexibility, causing myopia or tunnel vision, short-sightedness, or long-sightedness. It is our hardening lenses which form our prisons as we start to live in more limited ways. Notice how all young children are excited to play and keen to explore the world around them, but by the time they are teenagers their interests narrow and their enthusiasm wanes, then they become young adults who generally buckle under and conform to the status quo before settling into mid-life, and then finally slowing down as the aging process takes over. Not a pretty picture of freedom, vitality and a life well-lived.
The solution is to practice mental flexibility, by learning to reconnect with your inner and true self, that part of you that has always been there. I love the movie The Shawshank Redemption which was about one incarcerated man choosing to be different to all the others – to escape from the prison. Every night whilst his fellow inmates were asleep, he used a little chisel to dig a hole through his cell wall. It’s a beautiful metaphor for the work we can each do to liberate ourselves from mental slavery, but it’s a choice.
Unfortunately, as in the movie, few escape as we become accustomed to our environment and largely institutionalized. Not dissimilar to Stockholm Syndrome, after years of living with our familiar captive thoughts, feelings and resulting behaviors, we are not sure we want to, or even can live any other way. That’s why it’s important to find a soul guide, someone on the outside who can show you the way through the wall. Please contact me, psychologist in Fourways.