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What’s the point of being free if then we slave ourselves?

Mythology can be understood, among one of its many meanings, as an externalization of our psychological life and in that way, by making the unconscious conscious, it sheds light on our daily actions, showing them in all their tragedy. At times I think mythology only becomes concrete by being acted out, but in our own way.

Take for example the Titans and their sad punishments after being defeated by the Olympian gods. Prometheus was chained. Sisyphus was sentenced to carry an immense rock to the top of a hill, only to see the rock fall and start all over again the next day. And Atlas had to carry all the weight of the world on his shoulders.

If we are honest, in our daily life, in our real life, many of us face similar situations. Like Prometheus, we are chained to circumstances that gnaw at us and from which we cannot free ourselves. The rest of the night only serves to face those same circumstances the next day, without anything changing.

Like Sisyphus, our daily work becomes useless and meaningless. We do the same day after day. We repeat the same task so many times and for so long that we already do it without thinking. And we achieve nothing. There is no true rest, only a short recharge of energy to return to the same cycle of uselessness and foolishness the next day.

And like Atlas we sometimes feel, literally and metaphorically, that we carry the weight of the world (at least, our world) on our shoulders. Problems (health, money, relationships) accumulate. Efforts do not bring results. And those who say that they are going to help us (as Hercules told Atlas) is only to deceive us and, in the end, we end up worse.

But what if one day, for whatever reason, the cycle breaks and we are free? What if the chains fell off, if we no longer had to push stones and if the world was no longer on our shoulders?

Sometimes it seems to me that we have become so used to the chains and the weight of traditions, dogmas, discrimination, failures, victimization (real or self-imposed) and social pressures that, if someone removes our chains, we will not move and we will stay right there, in the same place. It is as if the doors of our prison were opened, but we did not get out.

And if the rock of Sisyphus fell and walked away, instead of rejoicing that we no longer have to carry it, we would run after it, perhaps even yelling at it to stop. And if someone removes the burden we carry, we will look for another burden, , real or imaginary, perhaps heavier, because we cannot bear the lightness of freedom.

The instant when the divinity or the universe tells us "You are now free", at that very moment, we begin looking for new chains to chain us, rocks to push and worlds to carry, thus denying our freedom.

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