The Strings

I used to think I was in charge.

I determined where I went, what I did, how I reacted.

Yet at some point I noticed that I reacted in ways I did not want to react.

I saw myself being pushed in a direction I did not want to go and placed in circumstances moving me even further away from where I wanted to be.

And I realized: I am not in control.

Although it may seem self-evident we cannot control the things which happen to us, our circumstances, but we SHOULD be able to control the way we react to circumstances.

Yet, at one point I noticed that I did not even control my own reactions and emotions; other people did.

They pushed buttons, and I responded in a predictable way.

I found my left hand being drawn to the right without me wanting to go to the right, my feet were moved to the side while I wanted to go forward, my mouth was uttering words I did not want to speak, and my thoughts were like a whirlwind in a crystal ball.

The force of the thoughts  triggered by emotions could sweep me off my feet and push me towards where I had no intention of going.

It seemed to me as if I was the only person experiencing this inner discrepancy.

As I looked around the others seemed to be at peace with it.

They went wherever the motion took them.

And then I looked up.

I always had focused on the horizontal plane of vision, looking forward, backward, to the sides.

I even looked downwards to my feet, but I never bothered to turn my head upwards.

Yet when I did, I began to see the strings.

Vaguely at first, not knowing what they were and what purpose they served.

But as I set my mind on spending more time looking up instead of sideways, I began to discern the strings more clearly.

I could see how the strings were attached to my hands and my feet.

Whenever the strings were pulled, my head looked to the right when I really wanted and needed to look to the left, my hand would go up when I did not want to, and my feet moved forward when I just wanted to stand still.

At first I was puzzled at the sight of strings controlling every aspect of my being.

Who was moving these strings, and how exactly did these invisible mighty ones maneuver the strings?

Intrigued as I was by the sight of these strings, I began to spend a lot more time gazing upwards so that I might find out more about the strings and how they were operated.

Slowly I began to see how these strings were made of the fiber of emotions, just like the glasses I wore.

These emotions had attached themselves to the hands, the feet and my head.

Whenever a mighty one pulled on a string of emotion, the corresponding part of my body attached to the string automatically reacted by moving in the direction where the mighty one wanted me to.

As I spent time gazing upwards, I noticed how these strings were interconnected with each other.

They looked like a big spider's web, and the more I struggled and pulled to be free from the strings, the more intricate the web became.

My struggle only exacerbated the issue, causing more strings to knot together, so that when a mighty one pulled one of the strings, all the other strings now also pulled on the body parts connected to the strings.

I felt like a fly caught in the spider's web.

The more I struggled, the more I found myself trapped in it.

I realized that instead of being in control, I was a slave of the strings of emotions.

Whenever the string was pulled, the emotion of the string pulled on my being and made me act in resonance with the string.

I was a prisoner, doing things because the strings were pulled and not because I desired to do them, thinking in a way which was the result of the manipulation of these strings.

Even my thoughts were fashioned along the lines of the strings of the web.

The more I struggled, the more intricate the web of strings became, and the more active the mighty ones became in pulling the strings.

My struggle only increased the strength of the strings.

The odd thing was that as the strings increased in strength, the image I could see through my glasses blurred my vision to a greater degree than before.

Whenever I struggled to get free, the strings of the web lighted up with what seemed like a stream of light moving from my head upwards through the strings.

Seeing this river of light emanate from my being through these wires I felt as if part of me was moving through the wires into the dark.

And as stream of light was tapped out of my head, my image in the mirror took on a dullness where before it showed life and energy.

Then I understood: the more I struggled with the manipulation, the more I ended up sacrificing part of myself in the struggle.

I could see my very soul moving through the wires, bit by bit, a stream of light which the mighty ones were able to harvest.

They were like customers in an ice-cream parlor sucking up the melting ice through straws.

I was trapped in an intricate web of glistening wires woven with the fabric of my soul awaiting the moment the master spider would come down to devour my entire essence.

As I looked at the others I noticed how most of them never bothered to look up.

The more I tried to warn them to make them aware of how they were exploited and served as a meal to the mighty spiders, the more animosity I encountered.

The others simply did not want to see the ugly truth.

They preferred to live in an illusion of being free and in control, like I used to.

They would rather be part of the make-belief world as it was colored by their glasses, than to feel the pain of beholding their deformity in perfect vision.

The difference between me and those others is that I simply could never be at peace with the sight of my manipulation.

I simply was unable to close my eyes to the ugly truth an lose myself in a willful fantasy bliss of oblivion.

I could see the discrepancy between who I truly was, and the manipulation pushing me into a mask of a pseudo-existence where the forces pulling on the strings could determine who and what I was intended to be.

And so, I tried to warn the others, only to find out that many of them had come to identify with the forces pulling on the strings.

They BECAME the strings and the mask they put on, and never bothered to look up to see the truth.

Some of them did look up, but the truth of what they saw simply did not register on their consciousness.

They beheld some strings and fell in love with the wires and how they lighted up with streams of light flowing from their heads into the dark, fully immersing themselves into the mask put on them by the forces operating the strings.

I never could do that.

Some might call that a shortcoming, a handicap, but for me it is something which saved my life.

For if I had not had this inner discontent about the discrepancy between the mask and the person I truly was, I would have lost my life in exchange for a comfortable existence dangling on the strings of the mighty spiders.

After trying to struggle with the strings and becoming aware of how my struggle actually created a web of strings keeping me captive to the whims of the mighty ones, I stopped struggling to see what would happen.

Furthermore, I decided I also would refrain from acting in agreement with the strings which were pulled, since the remedy to the grip of the strings on my being obviously was not pulling back and struggling against the pull.

The struggle only strengthened the fiber of emotion of the strings and released more of my light through these wires.

Instead, I decided to simply stand back and watch how the strings were pulled.

And then something extraordinary happened.

As I was not struggling anymore nor identifying with the pull on the strings, the mighty ones gradually seemed to lose interest since they no longer got the feedback from me they desired.

Furthermore, as the strings were pulled less and less, the fiber of the strings began to weaken.

The strings simply did not have the strength they used to have.

They slowly began to disintegrate.

And as the strings slowly disintegrated, the clarity of vision through my glasses increased.

Every now and then a mighty one might put an obstracle on my path and pull a few strings to see if I would react.

But as long as I constantly was watching this manipulation of strings and not struggling with it, the strings grew weaker and weaker.

Since the spiders did not want the strings to snap, they realized they had to be careful in the way they dealt with me.

As the strings grow weaker and weaker, I regain the freedom to move about and truly do what I want to do, moving in the direction of my heart.

I am still limited by the presence of these strings, but the limitation is much less than what it used to be.

If I keep this up for the rest of my life, ultimately the strings will simply wear out and snap.

The more strings will snap, the more freedom I will have, and the greater the clarity of vision through my glasses.

There is a big difference between the moment when I first noticed the presence of the strings and who I am today.

I still have the presence of strings attached to my body, but they have lost much of their strength, and the mighty ones cannot pull on them with much force anymore.

If they use too much force, they risk snapping the strings.

But I suppose that as long as I am cast into the body of a marionette I have to learn to deal with the presence of strings, no matter how weak they may be.

It's a battle I wage with myself, or rather, my marionette body.

It has strings attached to the mighty ones who want to create marionette robots to walk on the wheel of lies in their slave system.

I was not created to walk on the wheel of lies.

Because of the way I was created I am not compatible with the puppet theater of make-belief where exploitation, slavery and lies have become laws disguised as assets, enhancements for the lives of the puppets.

And so, for the time I am to be here in this theater, I have to watch the other puppets merrily acting out their robotic manipulated parts, dreaming themselves to be free and in control.

It's useless to try to wake them up.

Their choice has turned them into stage props, stage-dwellers, and trying to wake them up only is rewarded by a dose of their wrath sent my way.

So, I try to aim for the few individuals on the stage who come from the same home where I came from.

They will never be content with their marionette robot existence because they are different.

They hate the falsehood of the theater and long for truth.

They are my family.

They are me.