I know a young lady recently with dreamy eyes piercing from the ridge of her forehead.
She is a daddy's girl. I don't mean to merely describe that her daddy loves her.
No. I mean her daddy trails her everywhere. Church, lesson classes, school, friend's house, personal outings... everywhere!
I was curious, if not baffled with the stifling fatherly obsession and asked the girl where she had been without her Dad. She smiled as someone quite conversant with that line of question.
As we chatted on, her Dad showed up behind the concrete wall our chairs rested on and I knew time was up. "I shall not be caught competing with him for his daughter's attention" I wisely thought!
On our next chance meeting, I asked her whether she had thought to escape from his quizzing eyes...to go to places where her juvenile enthusiasm and fiery imagination was only her company...to explore what it means to board a vehicle that's not driven by her Dad to a place that is not her home and be surrounded by people who are not parenting her but are interesting, interesting people,nonetheless...
As I rattled on in my description, her face lit up each millisecond my sentences fell to her ears. I was making her salivate,I suspect. But her response was rather shocking.
"That would be scary" she retorts. "Not even my mum to support me there?" She asks genuinely but I wasn't going to answer.
I saw the problem already.
While I was reeking of pity for a shackled lioness that would otherwise benefit from the limitless swath of the wild, I should have looked even closer to see that her chains were not only parental. They were personal.
She was afraid to be free!
And it stopped her from fighting for it!
Although I do not doubt she craves for a life outside the umbrella of her parents, she won't "kill" for it. She won't ruffle feathers to fly. She wants freedom handed to her gradually, incrementally and neatly.
I sit here typing feverishly with mammoth disappointment simmering down in my chest. She would wait too long to have it her way!
Sometimes, you've got to put a rag in your teeth and face the bull in the yard before the gates open wide for you.
This is a parcel to those who are scared to succeed, those who are afraid to achieve, those who fear the fray of freedom. It's not going to be a pretty, composed or quiet walk through the halls of your phobia.
You need to come swinging a club, shattering glasses, throwing rocks, keeping unbelievable pressure on yourself till what you want cracks open.
It's time!