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The Caged Bird Who Didn't Want To Fly Away


One day, a professor of mine was teaching Tagore's lyrical ballad on freedom and confinement, 'The Caged Bird and The Free Bird'. In this poem, we can see the free bird pleading to the caged bird to come out of its cage and explore the woodlands, the rightful place where it ought to be. But the caged bird refuses to do so, expressing its anxiety and fear over the unknown, and how it is quite comfortable being enclosed in that cage because it is all that it has ever known. And I asked myself, why is it so?

Why?

Why did it refuse a chance at freedom- to soar high over the clouds and feel the wind against its face?

Why was it so foolish and naive to stick to its confinement and live out its life pathetically?

And then I remembered..

Then, I remembered how I stick to the same pair of jeans every other day because I know they go with everything.

I remembered how I choose the milk version of every single chocolate I come across just because I've been told that the dark one is way too bitter.

I remembered how I'd restrained myself from speaking out against things that I knew I should've- how I had clipped my mouth shut in those weary situations.

I remembered how I was manipulated all the while being fully aware that I was being manipulated, but still, I allowed myself to be hurt and to be used just because I held the people who did it close to my heart.

You see, the problem isn't about being unaware of the prison you're in. It's when you know you're in a prison yet you make a home out of that prison that you truly curb your own talents and put a limit on yourself. Familiarity breeds comfort (I know it's contempt, but in this case it's comfort) and as human beings, we cling on to that comfort. We do not dare to deviate from it solely because we're familiar with the four walls that keep us bound, no matter how suffocating it might be to endure it. Even if there is no source of ventilation in that room- even if we'll soon run out of oxygen and die- we'd choose to remain there until our last breath just because the outside world is scary and beyond our understanding.

We are just like the caged bird who is secure in its cage's safe corner. We are just like the caged bird who bemoans that it would not find its perch in the clouds and the joy that comes with it.

And until and unless we dare to take a leap and take chances, we'll remain like the caged bird till the time comes when we'll wither out and die.

Now tell me, do you really want to be like that caged bird?

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