The caged bird is being a drama queen

Being happy in your present circumstance I firmly believe is an act of will. I do not believe it to be a trait innate to man. We would have never created the things we have were we innately content. Since walking Baloo this morning, wispy clouds of panic, dread, sadness, and despair have started to form around my thoughts. I will drop Ashley off and then I will be alone. Yesterday it was 'yay!' Today I will miss her. I'm sure I will be fine but I wish my Soul Twin were in town so I could go visit her for the New Year or at least talk to her. If I were in Tennessee right now, I am sure I would be craving space, craving my friends, wishing I were somewhere I wouldn't have to make empty promises to visit more often, feeling bad for knowing I don't even make it to the places I actually want to go, and wondering how will I ever be content when I never set a bar I can reach. I am berating myself for the plans I didn't make for this time off and sad because I don't even know what those plans would be.

The caged bird sings because it has boundaries. Because it already knows everything it ever needs to know about life. No one will move their cheese or send them off to make their own way in the world. They can be at peace in their circumstance because they have no capacity to change it. There is a certain freedom in that. There is no 'out there', no opportunity or disappointment over the hill. There is no feeling, 'if only I left the cage every now and again.' It's why they swaddle infants, why the latest craze in curbing dog anxiety is a compression jacket (true story-it's called a thunder jacket). If my boss had been at work today, I would have gone there and until I succumbed to a late afternoon nap, there was a chance I might go anyway just because I really didn't otherwise know what to do with myself. I've let work become a cage. Not unlike a crate for dogs or cage for birds, it's become a refuge. An unsatisfying refuge but a refuge. Something I can be sure of, even if I'm sure it's going to suck. Though it would perhaps have better connotation if I referred to it as swaddling instead of a cage, I think we all seek something, marriage, career, hobbies to provide us a sense of stability in an otherwise forward marching always changing existence.

The poem that inspired the title of this post and the Maya Angelou autobiography bearing the same name evokes images of slavery, being bound and oppressed.

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,
When he beats his bars and would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings –
I know why the caged bird sings.

Paul Laurence Dunbar

What can I say of a time I didn't live? What I do know, unbound with nothing but opportunity before me is that I'm shopping for cages.