Cutting The Chains

Cutting ties with anything that doesn’t support what you’re trying to achieve should be simple.

But the mind isn’t that cooperative.
There’s an invisible wall between what feels acceptable to cut away — and what feels completely untouchable.
Most of the time, you don’t even see the untouchable parts. They don’t exist on your internal map.

You notice it clearly in conversations.
When something from the other side of that wall is brought up, the defense mechanisms fire instantly.
The wall cracks, the current state is threatened, the ego reacts.
And the conversation shifts into an argument whose only real purpose is to protect something that’s already lost.

So we tell ourselves we’ve “done everything we can,” that we’ve removed everything that can be removed — yet nothing changes.
And the blame must lie somewhere else. With other people. With circumstances.

But in most cases, it’s denial.
A deep-rooted unwillingness to even glance at what sits behind that wall.

What’s back there often resembles an open, ugly wound.
You know it needs stitches, but each needle prick hurts so much that you choose to cover it with a plaster instead.
Out of sight, out of mind.
It feels better for the moment.
But a wound that isn’t stitched will scar — and if you ever want the scar removed, the wound has to be opened again and stitched properly.
The pain doubles; now you have to cut and stitch.

I’ve lived in that position for decades.
Believing I had done what was necessary — yet nothing truly shifted.
And despite trying to find someone or something to blame, it was rarely the fault of the environment.
It was my own reluctance to confront what challenged my self-image, because doing so would reveal a failure:
that I had been lying to myself for a very long time.

And blaming something else is always easier.

My conclusion is this:
You cannot act rationally with one hand while the other hand is chained.
The free hand will instinctively be used for survival — not development.

Cut the chains so both hands can work toward the same objective.
Once that happens, the mind and the internal state follow automatically.

The opposite order doesn’t work.