Self-Imposed Boundaries

Invictus by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

This poem was said to provide inspiration to Nelson Mandela during the inevitable dark periods of his imprisonment. While imprisoned, Mandela remained for 9000 days in an 8 foot by 8 foot cell. For perspective, my walk-in closet is certainly bigger than the cell he lived in, while the house I reside in is over 6000 square feet.

It seems at times we don’t need physical boundaries to limit our range of motion. Despite the ability to travel at will, we nevertheless become emotionally incapacitated and rarely seek to move farther than the walls of our “imprisonment”. There are moments when I feel that the walls are meaningless physical boundaries, because I’ve bound myself to an emotional representation of my own making, which can often times be as small or smaller than an 8 X 8, enclosure. It’s not reality, but it certainly feels like my range of motion is so small as to be suffocating. As a good friend of mine liked to say, “Perception is reality”, thus despite the fact that the limitation I feel is merely emotional, it nonetheless feels physical.

It’s easy to sympathize with the plight of those in prison, then, because many of us have personally felt some sort of imaginary boundaries. Of course, we are not actually prevented from conducting our daily activities as we wish, so the commonality ends with merely an understanding of the emotional component of being unable to penetrate mental boundaries. Perhaps what those of us in this situation need to learn is the ability to force our minds to grasp the true freedom we are fortunate to have and allow ourselves time off for good behavior.