It is not too difficult to liken life to flying a kite. You hold it back too much and it won't ever fly too high. You cut the string too much slack and it will easily come down. To think that there is a balance possible between the two is also rather silly. Life is unpredictable, you can't measure and predict everything. You have to read the wind, stay nimble on your feet, adapt and learn to dance with the elements, much like finding a rhythm and a melody in even the rocking of a paper boat in a choppy drain.
Bondage is the essential human condition. Try as we may, we are always bound to something. Even trying to be not bound is being bound to being unbound. Thus the whole circus about being free or measured or footloose and fancy-free etc really amount to nothing. We will always have a bit of our past, a bit of the future, the shell of our bodies and the limits of our abilities and imagination keeping us at bay.
The beauty in life, though, is when, on occasion the kite holds its own up there in the skies. Unfortunately, those moments are rare and the recent past has seen very few of them in my life. It is easy to then imagine the pleasures of the promised land and the lovely sunshine of the future as a way out, but that seldom does little to ease or lighten the burden of the present. Life really comes full circle when, even in the farthest of places, the people and things who are the most distant are still the closest to you.
What often happens in my case then is a descent into a mechanical existence, letting the thoughts roam free like ghouls on a dark plain, devouring anything and everything it encounters, As I have grown older it has become harder to suppress them. It is marginally better in terms of torture to let them run their course, do their nasty work and then pick yourself up. Finally, when the clear light of the day shines through the carnage left behind is not often a pretty sight. There is always a price to pay and life is something that I can't ever afford to stall.
p.s: One of the things I wanted to do when I started writing down the personal side of my thoughts in a public domain, once again after many years was to get rid of the metaphorical skulduggery. I must admit that I am nowhere close to being able to accomplish that yet. I have always been comfortable writing about myself, but I have never been comfortable doing that when it involves the lives of people close to me. I guess that reinstates the status quo.