I talk to people, and I understand their hopes, fears and dreams. I talk to them and they spill it all away, they spill their life into words, as if some dam has been broken. It occurs to me, and this happens quite often, that they, themselves, are the barrier they so desperately want to jump across. I tell them this to varying degrees. Before we shower it onto them, we must always gauge a person’s ability to take the truth. Most people are broken vessels, with invisible cracks here and there, and if you pour the truth onto them, the cracks give way, and nothing good comes out of it. But then, after all is said and done, I sit at a coffee table with my deepest troubles and insecurities, and I remember I, too, am the same way. I, too, pretend to cross hurdles and call it a life well-lived, knowing too well I put some of them there.
Yet, even if we lock ourselves into a prison and swallow the key, we must break out of it as if someone else has put us there. The quality of the solution does not change, regardless of who began the problem. An insect flying into a room must find a way out, irrespective of whether the gust pushed it in or whether it flew of its own volition and confusion. That is its only goal in the little time it spends inside: to leave safely and not be spotted, and if spotted, to manoeuvre away and not be smacked, and if caught, to hope, to hope their jailer is a child who intends to let them out.
And this is what I tell people when I tell them the truth. It is not our concern how the mess came about; it is our concern to leave it, to make it out alive, and sometimes, we must do what we must do, and hope, we must hope for kindness. But before all of that, before any of it, we must admit we are in the wrong place. We must excuse ourselves as soon as we can. But most people seldom leave. They spend their lives changing the furniture and redecorating. But the prison remains a prison, no matter how you dress it up. More often than not, I cannot tell them this, for they cannot handle the truth.
I would know; I am like that, too. I am like all the people I talk to. All people are broken vessels, and if not broken, most of us are, at least, cracked.