The Cage Was Open All Along
“You are not afraid of being seen. You are afraid of being yourself.”
I came across this line recently, and it stopped me.
Not because I was afraid of people seeing me.
But because I suddenly wondered if, for a long time, I had been afraid of myself.
There is a story about a parrot who lived in a cage.
Every day, it screamed the same thing:
“Freedom. Freedom. Freedom.”
One night, the master’s son heard it and decided to set the parrot free. He opened the cage, pointed towards the window and said, Go. You’re free, but the parrot didn’t move. It kept sitting inside the cage, screaming:
“Freedom. Freedom. Freedom.”
The night passed, by morning, the shouting had stopped.
The boy thought the parrot must have finally flown away. But when he looked, the parrot was still sitting inside the cage.
The door was open.
And yet, it stayed.
That story has been sitting with me because I think I have been that parrot in ways I didn’t realise.
For years, I wanted freedom.
I wanted to get out of the life I was living.
I wanted to leave the things that suffocated me.
I wanted to speak freely, create freely, live freely, choose freely.
But somewhere along the way, I had become so accustomed to the cage that I started believing the cage was who I was.
I thought I was introverted.
Maybe I had simply forgotten how much I loved talking.
I thought I wasn’t someone who liked being seen.
Maybe I had simply spent years making myself smaller.
I thought I needed to figure myself out before I could live differently.
Maybe I just needed to give myself permission to try.
And something has been changing lately.
I started posting.
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I started recording myself talking.
I started writing again.
I started putting my thoughts into the world instead of keeping them inside my head.
And strangely, I’m not afraid.
I’m not constantly wondering what people will think.
I’m not hiding my face.
I’m not embarrassed by my voice.
I’m not trying to make myself smaller.
In fact, I find myself watching my own videos and thinking, “Oh. There you are.”
And maybe that’s what freedom actually feels like.
Not suddenly becoming fearless.
But becoming so comfortable with yourself that being yourself no longer feels like a risk.
Maybe the cage was never locked.
Maybe nobody was actually stopping me.
Maybe I had simply spent so long believing I couldn’t leave that I forgot to try.
And that’s the uncomfortable part about freedom.
Sometimes, when the door finally opens, you still have to choose to walk through it.
No one can do that part for you.
You can spend years shouting for freedom.
You can blame the cage.
You can wait for someone to rescue you.
You can keep asking,“When will I finally be free?”
Or you can look around one day and realise:
The door is open.
And perhaps the real question isn’t: “Who is going to set me free?”
It’s: “What am I still afraid to become if I actually am?”
I’m still figuring that out.
But for the first time, I’m not standing inside the cage asking for freedom.
I’m learning how to fly.
-Gypsy Petals
