cedar_grove | Swans In Jars

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

A man raised a baby swan in a glass jar, but as the bird grew it became stuck in the jar.
The man was caught now, for the only way to free the thing was to break the jar, killing the swan.
--Zen Saying

Even more devastating and subtle are the ways in which we jar ourselves. If our mind is the man raising the baby bird, then the swan is our heart… Too often, we can contain our way of being within our way of surviving.

I had a great deal of trouble knowing what to write in this one… partly because my mind can't shake the practical answer/question… which is not of course what the parable is about… I mean, why does breaking the jar kill the swan instead of freeing it? That's my whole problem with this one.

Same as the whole Jonathan Livingston Seagul thing (If you love something, set it free, if it comes back to you, it is yours, if it does not, it never was). Always had a problem with that too… yes it's very noble and all that, and the right thing to do, but – bleh! I'm old and cynical, don't mind me – I'm not even gonna finish that thought.

Maybe that's a prime example of me jarring myself… shielding myself in my own glass jar to avoid getting hurt, to actually say what I really thing of that. Well maybe I've been hurt one too many damn times, and I don't feel like having my feelings on this dragged over the microscope of examination and analysis. Let's just say, I've been there, done that… and they came back for as long as it suited them to be there, and then absconded again, leaving me in more pain than I was in letting them go in the first place.

Minor digression, sorry. I sound angry, I sound bitter – the fact of it is I'm neither, just sad… so, yeah… why does breaking the jar kill the swan? Perhaps if someone could explain that one to me…?