A barbed wire barricade could be keeping you safe from dangers outside the fence, or it could be preventing you from accessing a place that you want—or even need—to go. And even when you’re standing there looking at the fence, it isn’t always obvious which one is the case.
When you look at your life, what kind of barricades do you see?
Chronic illness prevents me from doing want I want to do. I often feel fenced in.
I can’t drive. I’ve attempted driver ed repeatedly, but with my coordination problems, it’s ended badly. (One driving school proprietor told my parents that due to my coordination problems, I couldn’t learn to drive, and refunded their money. A few years later, I crashed a driver ed car into another vehicle, effectively ending that round of driver ed. Fortunately, no one was hurt.)
I live in a middling-size city, one with mediocre transit. If I had to rely solely on the bus system, I wouldn’t be able to go out on Sundays, and couldn’t get home after 6 on Saturdays. I can’t get to the next town over, and it takes a couple hours to cross the city (including wait times). And all the good jobs are either of the range of the bus system, or run too late for me to get home on a bus. Fortunately, my spouse drives. But I would rather not have to rely on him. For example, it would be unfair for him to have to get me at 10 or 11 PM, since he has to be up for a 7 AM job.