Moving invisible prisons

That is what we live in, when we live in the city, surrounded by people we don't know. Afraid to disturb them, reducing our expression to pitiful shadows, projecting our lives onto the least common denominator of tolerance and understanding, which has for a long time now been low and is still falling.

It's as if each individual on the street presents a force field around them, which pushes against that of everyone else, and in crowds become a full tesselation, out of whose each of its pieces its respective person does not dare project his own truth, lest it conflict with that of his neighbor's.

This interaction of "personal spaces" varies upon each person's perspective - a shy person will feel his own space dwarved by everyone else's, while a confident person might feel the opposing view. But if you understand what I mean, you will know that its effects are real and highly influential on our lives.

How to break free? How to escape from our tiny, invisible, self-imposed prisons? You might forcefully expand our own space to ignore everyone else's - as it is mental, it is a matter of proper thoughts and willpower. But everyone else would not take to that too kindly - some would react by avoiding you as much as possible, while others would confront you physically, an instinctive reaction to recover their territory. In any case, force has few friends, so it does not seem to me as the optimal manner of coexistence. And I find our current lifestyle undesirable too, so how can we improve upon it?

If you see friends walking and talking on the sidewalk together, you know they are sharing their personal spaces. They agree to merge their individualities and differences into a single shared experience for a while, and during this time, they allow each other access to their thoughts, and expressions, and feelings. As much as each one allows, of course. Think about a couple in love sitting together in a park, enjoying their love and each other. They also share their spaces and bodies, and may eventually move on to sharing the rest of their lives.

The alternative that I think as a solution to these prisons is, then, to share. To share our thoughts, our expressions, and to be less afraid of other people's reactions and intolerance, and rather focus on the good one might bring them by interacting with them. I think we should expand our personal spaces, not to push everyone else's, but in an inviting manner, expressing but not imposing, proposing a merging of our lives, if only for a little while, and thus attempt to reduce the fear and mistrust so prevalent in so many people today.

Like Stewart McCoy said, we should open ourselves to the world and to others, because it helps you learn and grow in experience, wisdom, trust, and love. Ok, I made that very last part up, but I'm slightly in a hurry because we're about to reach the Rafting place and I don't feel I have enough time to search for what exactly he said.

I have to take my own advice. Again. For real.