Is it weird that I’m so domesticated now? It really wasn’t that long ago that the wild animal in me ran rampant and untamed. Now it’s a different story. I think it’s a better one too… but how can I really know for sure?

On another note: I find it fascinating to watch my not-quite 2-year-old daughter buckle herself into the highchair. Sometimes she’ll do it with the carseat straps too. There was a time earlier, when she was just getting big enough to sit on her own, that she fought those clicks that meant confinement.

In the morning, just a couple hours from now, I’ll be working on breakfast and JoJo will want to sit in her chair. She won’t let me connect the plastic latch, oh no… SHE has to do it.

It must be in our human nature to want to harness and control ourselves, the routines of our day and our lives. We want to be in charge of things and do it our own way.

Funny though, the straps on her breakfast chair, are a restriction. This safety feature keeps her locked down and stops her from crawling all over our bar and reaching the things we keep at a distance from her grabby hands…

She might whine about being stuck in there sometimes. She herself clicked the lock. It’s such a perfect metaphor for life in general. I suppose the symbolism will only get more elaborate and layered when she learns to open it too, and risks a possible fall.

When I dive deep into conspiracies and fall into never-ending rabbit holes on the internet, I look to the immediate world around me and see if I find proofs of any type. This seemingly natural bend toward self-domestication seems to help prove some far-fetched theories.

I have my daughters best interest at heart, when I use the safety straps on her highchair. She’s helping herself when she takes charge and locks herself in. I wonder then how this relates to the areas where I fasten and clamp down on myself instead of being mentally, physically or spiritually free?

Where have I drawn my own boundaries and who is it always helping? Hopefully it’s for my own good. I wonder though upon deeper inspection, where I might want to reevaluate. Just keeping routine for routine’s sake, can’t always be good. Maybe I don’t always benefit from more and more sedentary domestication.

At some point Joella will have to graduate and let go of always having a seatbelt wherever she sits. She would look funny to be my age someday and still wanting to be strapped into a plastic chair, just for sausage and eggs in her own kitchen.

Until next week my friends, stay open to those areas where it’s time to graduate, to engage the next gear, and leave behind the unnecessary straps holding you back.

God Bless

Sincerely,

Aaron Nichols