The trapped man

I know this blog usually leans dark philosophy— but bear with me, I want to tell you a story.

Once, an old man lived alone in a cabin. He was cursed: if he stepped outside, he’d die.

He had many children and he would send his children  out into the world to explore and return with stories, objects, information. That’s how he learned about the world, from the safety of his confinement, from the love he has for his children.

He gave them careful instructions: what to look for, how to behave, what to avoid.
Often, they brought back telling stories with contradictions: flowers with thorns, honey surrounded by bees.

Then one day, He told them he wanted it at any cost — the most beautiful thing in the world. The one who brought it back would be his favorite.

The children, eager to please him, scattered in all directions. But their excitement didn’t last long.

They returned in panic. One of them had been burned, head to toe.

His younger brothers said they’d found a sleeping dragon — radiant, terrifying — and tried to bring it home. But when the dragon woke up, it attacked them and is burning the world around them.

The old man was devastated. Overcome with guilt and fear, he shut everything down.
No more missions. No more exploring. He wasn’t just cursed anymore — he was paralyzed by shame.

Until one day, curiosity nudged him. Just enough.
He called out to the child. He looked at the injury. He was still burnt, but healing.

He did it again the next day ignoring his guilt and shame. 

It became a quiet routine.

He no longer felt the same shame and guilt as before - he was simply doing what needed to be done. 

And somewhere in that repetition, something changed. The pain softened. His perspective was slowly changing from looking at his own guilt to taking care of his own child.

He resumed sending his children out, cautious to not demand too much from them. 

They often came back saying the world is not ending and the dragon was nowhere to be seen.

But the wounded child next to him reminded him of the dragon.

He continued visiting the wounded child.

Each time he visited, He would forcefully focus on mending the child and not the dragon.

Sometimes he had to abandon his care as the burns were too much to look at.

But over the year, he no longer saw the dragon. All he felt was the love for the child.

Soon the child was strong enough under his care, scarred but healthy.

He let him go, to play with his brothers. 

He saw no difference between him and others ever again.

The old man is your brain and — trapped in your skull, sensing the world through signals it receives from the body, reacting based on past experiences and panicking when the senses tell him about the end of the world.

That routine of revisiting the wound? That’s neuroplasticity.

Each time you return to a painful memory — not to relive it, not to judge it, but simply to observe it, to look at it with compassion — your brain rewires itself.

The negative emotional charge weakens. The memory stops being a threat, but an event that occurred due to an attachment of an object.

You don’t need to heal completely. You just need to return. Gently. Consistently. Without making it a big deal.

Each time you visit, you will see that the memory is not as bad as last time you had visited it and that you can control yourself better.

I’ve seen this happen in myself to some extent. That’s the only reason I can write a blog about guilt and shame.

Don't get me wrong, I still feel shame and guilt — but they don’t grip me like they once used to.
Repetition changed that. Not some breakthrough. Just showing up to the wound, again and again.

I do truly believe that repetition would eventually make it mechanical without emotions.

I hope that one day I will learn to look at what I did with the same compassion.