With youth: You resist slavery because you already know freedom

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Acharya Prashant (AP): If you are deeply enslaved, then freedom will not appeal to you. And that is what happens to most of us.

We have so little taste of freedom, that slavery has become a habit for us. A very deep habit. We have grown accustomed to it. So accustomed, that freedom actually scares us, like a bird that has been kept in a cage for very long, very very long. Now you open the door of the cage, it refuses to fly away. It says, ‘What is wrong with being here?’ It is because it never had the taste of an open, unlimited sky.

It says, ‘I am alright here. I am very well protected. No cat can pounce upon me and my master feeds me nicely twice a day, he gives me meals and that is all life is, having two good meals a day and feeling safe and protected. Why go to the sky and risk my life? What is the fun in that?’ You will realize the fun only when you start flying. If you have never stretched your wings all your life, it is very difficult to tell it to you, very difficult.

I started on a note that you are feeling bad about being forced to do something. That is the note on which we started. Now examine that deeply. You can feel bad about being forced to do something, only if…