Introduction to Society’s Labyrinth
Some days I see the Labyrinth around me for what it is, and other days I am too far in it to see it. I have spent a lot of time struggling with it, in it, against it. And I think that many of us have.
What is the Labyrinth?
Most people spend their lives in Society’s Labyrinth and yet are unaware of its existence. Does a fish realize that it’s in water? The Labyrinth forms the background of our lives. It is easy to ignore as we go about our days.
The Labyrinth is a metaphorical hedge maze constructed by the complicated forces of human society and culture. Its tall pine hedges grow thickly, forming paths and walls. The hedges are in complicated arrangements. They spread on as far as we can see. The hedges grow fifteen to twenty foott tall, making them impossible to see over. We each move separately in different parts of society’s maze.
The Labyrinth is designed to keep us inside and keep us busy.
How the Labyrinth works
We start out in a tiny area of the maze determined by our immediate family and surroundings. The first hedges around us are shaped by the homes we grow up in and by extension our town and our country. As we grow older and begin attending school, we cover more distance in the maze. The school we go to and the religion we are raised in form hedges and paths around us. As children, our parental guardians choose directions for us to head in. And we may begin heading in directions aided by our teachers, relatives, siblings, and friends as well.
Many of us are teenagers when we come to our first major crossroads. We start deciding our directions in life. And as we begin adulthood, our early decisions lead us down paths that, in turn, lead us to new sets of choices.
We choose to go to a particular school, major in a subject. We may choose a career, a religion, a hobby, a political party. We may choose to move, to buy a house. We may choose to get married, we may choose to have kids. In short, we decide how to live our lives within the confines of the maze.
Most of us go through our lives meandering through this maze. We make our choices based on what is presented to us. We are rarely conscious of the Labyrinth’s influence over us.
The hedges in the Labyrinth form boundaries to help us choose what we should do. The Labyrinth is complex and formed by countless forces of society. In fact, each of us plays a small role in reinforcing the walls of the Labyrinth. And powerful people play a bigger role in this process.
It is difficult to describe the Labyrinth, especially since it looks a little different for each of us. I expand more about how Labyrinth works in my follow-up post, The Noise of the Labyrinth.
A thought exercise
Take some time to reflect on these questions in a journal.
How has the culture you grew up in directed your path in life?
Have you ever made choices based on what someone else wanted for your life?
Close your eyes. What does your part of the Labyrinth look like? Are the paths narrow or wide? Does it seem you have a lot of options or few?
You can leave the Labyrinth
The Labyrinth limits our potential. The hedges falsely restrict our paths. The Labyrinth wants us to do what is expected and normal, and not go out of bounds. While many people carve out beautiful and happy lives in the Labyrinth, many others may struggle.
If we spend our time bending to the whims of society, we can end up somewhere we never intended to go. Many people choose to take the easiest path. They are like a ball rolling downhill, always choosing the path of least resistance. However, they may look around on their death bed and realize that they had no real agency over their own life.
In order to go on a personal journey that I write about on this blog, it’s necessary to leave the Labyrinth. On a personal journey, it is important that you don’t make choices based on what society tells you you should do. Instead, you must follow your own inner compass.
Even if you can only leave the Labyrinth part-time, for a few hours a week, you will find completely new places you would have never found otherwise. As you leave the Labyrinth behind, every step you take is a step towards becoming your most authentic self.
The journey is never easy. But by going on a personal journey, you can get further than you ever dreamed. And you can come back to the Labyrinth with new knowledge, skills, and gifts.
When you are in the Labyrinth, it can seem like there is no way out. But there are ways if you know where to look.