Feeling trapped?

Mountain Climbing

“There's a lot of mountain climbers trapped inside the bodies of people behind the counter at Kinko's”

                                     Henry Rollins

Do you remember those little woven Chinese tubes that some bratty boy told you to stick your finger into? When you tried to pull it out, the tube closed down tight on your finger. The more you pulled, the tighter it gripped. There was a moment of panic when the child-you felt trapped. I remember flinging my hand around trying to shake it off, and then pulling harder as it clamped down and my finger turned purple. The only way to get out of it was to calm down and push my finger further into it until it released.

It's easy to get trapped—in a life that you never meant to live, in a job you never wanted, in a relationship that has long since gone stale. Someone told me just the other day about a couple who had been married for forty-seven years and hated each other every day of it. They talked about each other with unmitigated contempt, but stayed together because it was too much trouble to do anything else.

We can also be psychologically trapped in the past. When we hang onto old tapes that tell us we're not up to the job, or we're not attractive enough, or we're not the smartest person alive—we can get stuck and give up trying to be anything different. When we nurse an old grudge and keep it alive by our ministrations, we are just as trapped as we were in the Chinese finger-cuff.

There is a story told by Jeffery Masson about a pod of spinner dolphins swimming above a school of tuna. A huge fishing net, set to catch the tuna, closed around them, and noisy speed boats disoriented them. In the seconds before the net closed up tight, one dolphin saw the opening and leaped over the cork floats to freedom. When the dolphin realized it was out of the net, it made a series of high, bounding, joyful leaps clean out of the water. Being trapped in any way is no fun—freedom is.

In the words of that great Theologian, Mick Jagger, “I try not to get trapped in the past. That's why I tend to forget the words to my songs.” (Yeah, right!) Being trapped is sometimes a matter of choice, and sometimes a matter of fear. If you are really a mountain climber trapped inside the body of a Kinko's worker, leap like a dolphin, and find your freedom. You don't have to let old ways of thinking hang a ball and chain around your ankle. It may take some work, but you can climb that mountain.

                                               In the spirit,

                                               Jane