A bird stuck inside a cage with an open gate

I recalled one incident from my last Vipassana camp. on the 10th day, the meditators can talk to each other. Till the 10th day morning, there is complete silence. on the 10th night, a group of young meditators most of whom must be college students started having very loud discussions. I overheard them criticizing the discipline and the technique quite vocally. I could feel that they must be feeling like birds stuck inside a cage. A cage that they themselves opted for. 

On the other hand, many meditators have shared their experiences with me. Experiences of being stuck in this world because of their responsibilities. They do not enjoy worldly conversations, fake relationships, fun-seeking events, parties, drinks, sycophancy, mindless social rituals and customs, inferiority and superiority complexes, exploitation, and a mad race among all the human beings to reach somewhere, where nobody has ever reached. They also feel like stuck inside a cage. 

I really don't know whether this cage is a closed one or it has an open gate which we are not able to see because we are fixated on the side opposite to the side of the gate. Anthropologically, human beings survived in this world because they learned to cooperate by forming communities. This cooperation served them well and helped them survive. Slowly these communities grew bigger and bigger and today we belong to many communities that are quite large and exist in the form of nation and religion. 

So far these communities were smaller, and there was a bigger space for individual differences. the community rules were quite flexible. However, with the growth of the communities, individuals took a back seat. There is always an ongoing battle between community rules and individual freedom. Whenever certain individuals have revolted against the community rules for their individual freedom, they have been brutally killed by the societies. We have the example of Socrates, Jesus, and Galileo as prominent examples where these individuals challenged what society generally believed and society did not loterate these opinions. 

However, these individuals chose the open door rather than being fixated on the walls of the cage. They chose freedom to survive. That choice is available to us at each point in time. However, till we taste freedom, survival appears to be the aim of life. The moment one gets even the slightest taste of freedom, one develops a conflict within. After tasting the first drop of freedom, one is not happy being confined. Even if one lives a constrained life with a fear of social validation, there is always a sleeping volcano within. Nobody can predict when this sleeping volcano will erupt into an active volcano. 

Whenever these volcanos erupt, they give a new shape to the entire landscape. They bring altogether new creations. Human life is about the exploration of new possibilities. Survival is a necessity and there is no role of survival beyond that. Therefore communities and religions have a role to make human beings secure so that they can explore freely. The fun of living is in exploration. There is no fun living life stuck in a cage. One has to just turn around one's vision to see the gate of the cage that is always open.