A caged animal has but few options. He can accept the four barred walls he’s inside of, without hope and without happiness, and take the life that is his to live. This requires him to be docile and understanding: to feed when given food, to micturate at the appropriate time and to lay there as though this is as good as it gets.
Similar to a locked up criminal. Watched and governed by armed guards who care nothing for you as a human being (and generally treated as above mentioned caged animal), the imprisoned man or woman must adhere to the life available in their six by eight foot living quarters. And just like the dog or other animal told to sustain life behind steel bars, the options are to obey… or to unleash all anger, resentment, fear and violence that has built up inside of them, resulting in ramming themselves, animal or man, into the cage as a statement of aggression with the hopes and intention of freeing oneself, no matter the level of damage done to their self.
Inciting a riot. Bringing all hell to other inmates or other caged animals, if only allowed those beautiful moments of freedom from the cage that seals them in.
These behaviours result in anti-freedom, however. Solitary confinement. Longer lock downs. Beat downs, resulting in loss of conscienceness and other menial priveledges revoked. Imagine going back to square one, but behind even more and bleeding profusely. There is no end to this incarceration. You cannot free yourself and no one is there to help you.
The mind of an addict is not far off. He lives in a cage. He wants the life everybody else wants but can’t access it. He’s walled himself in and no matter how much he either does what he’s programmed or even if he plans a jailbreak, there is no escape.
The steel bars, he has implemented. They hold him nicely; cold and unforgiving, as his soul is inside the walls of flesh that contain him. The guards, he has appointed. He gives them permission to hold him down, even to beat him into unconsciousness on a regular basis. At times, he musters the weakest courage to fight back; to alter the governed system he has blueprinted and authorized but his kingdom is smarter than him, for he’s captive eternal.
Can he reprogram the system? Will he change himself and plant a virus so potent in the system he’s hardwired that it collapses from the inside and he can be fully pardoned and walk away unscathed, never to slip up again and feel the cold, steel shackles anchoring him back in these ways? It’s hope that keeps him alive.
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