i don’t remember how i happened on the following quote from frank zappa, but it’s been sitting in my bookmarks for awhile. sure, it’s a little wide-eyed and pollyanish, but i read it every now and then and it makes me smile:
“I think you devise your own limits for your own personal convenience. There are some people who wish to have limits, and they’ll invent as many boxes for themselves as they want. It’s like, you know, men invented armor. They wanted to protect themselves from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and so forth. And people do the same thing psychically and psychologically. They build their own armor. They build their own rathole, whatever it is. And they choose their existence. Whether they do it consciously or whether it is helped along by a government or an education system, somebody is helping to shape this imaginary box you live in, but it doesn’t have to be there.”
–Frank Zappa