“I have built a very comfortable cage for myself.”

A thoughtful client said this to me in our session this morning.

Which reminded me of something that also happened this morning.

My mother-in-law took my kid to this kind of restaurant place that also has an animal park attached to it. I visited it last year, hoping to see the goats and donkeys and ducks that were shown on the website. What I didn’t know was that there was also a lion there. And a tiger. A lion and a tiger, each in tiny, poky cages, in which both these incredible and powerful animals walked the perimeter of, over and over and over and over. I was horrified and appalled.

I text my mother-in-law this morning, asking if she knew about the lion and the tiger. I told her that they both looked really unhappy and that I think having them there in the animal park is cruel and unnecessary. I also told her that once my kid is old enough to understand, I will explain to him that I think it’s cruel and unnecessary, (and ask him what he thinks.) My mother-in-law replied with: “Yes, they are unhappy. But they don’t know they’re unhappy.”

I disagree. Their behaviour shows otherwise. The way the tiger and lion pace round and round their cages is not natural. The way they hang their heads. Their hollow, empty eyes say it all. I am convinced that on some level, they ‘know’ they are unhappy, but maybe they don’t know why, because this life, their cage, is all they know.

It’s the same with us humans, right? Most of the time, we know something’s not right, something’s off in our lives, but we don’t know why, because this life, our cage—the safe cage we have created for ourselves—is all we know too.