You probably don't remember the bars being here when you arrived. They weren't. Or the day the doors and the front gate slammed shut and sealed your fate. They never did. But you can't understand any of this, so you sit quietly inside your cell waiting for that far off date of your release. You are convinced the guards watch your every move, but in reality there is no man in a uniform binding you here. He's simply a rumor you've picked up on from the other inmates. You don't need his keys to escape. You may have even realized this in those fleeting moments in which you examine your prison with a keen eye.
But uncertainty binds you to your cell. The unknown void that lies outside the prison walls is a reality you have never known. With every fantasy you spin about a better life as a free man, you create ten nightmares about the cold world looming beyond your pristine incarcerated life. You simply cannot know. Why leap from the oven and into the frying pan? Life is not so bad, you convince yourself. You have your three meals and a roof over your head... what more could the unknown offer you? In truth, you don't even know how you would survive out there. Did you ever? What was life like before you got here? You can't even remember, or perhaps you've simply been here from the start. It's a whole different world out there... So, you hover in your weathered prison striped suit and serve your time behind the iron bars, behind the watchful guard, behind the closed doors, and behind that big bolted gate. You're in for life, it seems, and this prison will ensure you serve every year you owe.
The truth is, however, there are no bars. There are no guards. There are no walls, and there is no gate. When you entered this place it was an empty field, barren and desolate. Your mind put up these boundaries, and it has hired all the prison guards for no reason other than to contain itself. The bars were not here upon your arrival because they arrived with you, by you. Open your eyes and truly look at this prison you have created. If you stare long enough, search hard enough, you will watch it all crumble and fade. Revel in its destruction. This is you seeing for the first time. This is you realizing that you are not defined by the prison's terms, the prison is defined by yours. And now that you have seized this understanding, there is only thing is holding you back from your escape. These are the striped prison pajamas that cling to you. They are the only facet of the prison that truly exists, and the only shackle that separates you from the unknown. They have been with you since the beginning and they define the end. Cast them off and you are a free man, for better or worse.
Freedom has a price, however. Once you leave this prison, no crime in the world will bring you back to it. The world outside is unknown, and your cell, as confining as it was, was known. Is known. Will always be known. You are on the precipice of freedom and the border of illusion, teetering on the edge of the greatest height. You must stand or jump.
And as I leave you here, on the balance of life itself, do not think of me as cruel. Do not think of me as mischievous. I do not withhold from you the secrets of the universe, nor do I goad you into them. In truth, I cannot take you further than this point because I myself have not trespassed across it. I am on my own ledge. I am in my own prison cell. I too, serve a life sentence.
