Chris DeLine

Cedar Rapids, IA

Work Everyday

Published in Strays.

When you feel threatened, what do you do? Do you “step up”? Do you protect what you have? Is what you have something to be protected? What does it really do for you? Does it help you? Does it provide shelter from them? Or does it shelter you from yourself? From something more? Inside you? Is what you have what they want you to have – a feeling of security, of comfort, of “identity”? How will you react?

You have rights. You’ve earned them. You stand up to exercise those rights to defend the life you’ve worked hard for because you’ve got a backbone. And you won’t back down. You expect that flavor of liberty. No, you demand it. The freedom to stand up for yourself and what you believe in. But protecting reality is nothing more than protecting the illusion when you cannot distinguish one from the other. Compliance can feel so liberating when you don’t recognize the real threat.