Life's journey

Subject: Life's journey.

In that crooked journey, down the narrow street of life, boarded by events for which we had no answer,  we are entombed by the narrowness of our interest and the paucity of our intellect. We were bewitched by what we see ahead and what we see ahead we are programmed to see. Our upbringing ringed us into a limited corral from which there is no escape. Our horizons are the horizons of our parents and the folk around us, pegged to their experience, haltered by the length of rope which also proclaimed their lives.
This is not necessarily a bad thing since 'homespun' is good and emotionally comfortable but as an exercise in discovery, it severely limits the imagination. The fears which lie within every small community are propagated like orchids and like orchids are vulnerable
The manifest of most small communities lies in the height of the stockade they erected to prevent 'newness' seeping in.
Walking that narrow street of conformity we are blinkered if not blind to opportunity. We satisfy our desires with artificial stimulants, we falsify our dreams with a traditional contempt, a sarcasm for everything which has not been approved by the high priests of societal norms. Chloroformed by the stench of righteousness, imprisoned by religion, we stumble about making the best of a bad job. If we are clever we concoct a story line to make us sound, even to our own ears, heroic but in the still of the night we know the truth.
A wider street perhaps, with more opportunities to escape, but then with all that freedom, far away from the sound of home, would we be any happier or simply more observant. Treading new ground makes us, of necessity, more observant. Our very survival comes from scouting out and adapting, getting to know the surroundings.
The comfort of winging it home is not an option, until of course you have made the new surroundings our new home and then, once again, you are forced down the same narrow street of conformity.