The Bird in the Cage

Bird taking flight: the earliest lesson I carried about love and freedom.

In my twenties, certain books guided me: Kundera, Coelho, Walsch. But even earlier, childhood stories, songs, and philosophy were already shaping how I understood love, longing, and freedom.

One of my earliest memories is of watching a scene with a bird in a cage. A woman named a bird after the man she loved, then opened the cage and let it fly. I turned to my brother, who was surprised by my insight, and said with the certainty only a child can have: “She is naming and freeing him, like she is freeing her lover, the man who could not stay.”

Even at five, I sensed something simple and true. Love is not about holding tight. Real presence stays of its own accord.

A moment of childhood innocence, when stories began shaping how I understood love and longing.

Lessons in Conscience and Escape

La Cigale et la Fourmi by Jean de La Fontaine gave me my first sense of conscience: the idea that doing what is right often requires sacrifice.

As a child, I also read Martine, those gentle illustrated stories that followed her through everyday adventures. They offered a world of innocence and belonging, a reminder that the ordinary moments of life can hold their own kind of magic.

Then came Alice in Wonderland, which opened the door to imagination and offered escape as survival. In the film musical I watched as a child, Alice was drowning in her own tears while the Mouse sang, You’ve Got to Know When to Stop. That moment stayed with me. Even then, I sensed its wisdom: emotion, when left unchecked, can overwhelm. Knowing when to pause is a kind of care.

And then there was music. Madonna’s Borderline, La Isla Bonita, and Papa Don’t Preach were soundtracks I carried with me. I choreographed dances to them, turning the living room into a stage where strength and vulnerability could move side by side. Those songs taught me how to hold rebellion and romance together, how to balance softness and power in the same hand.

The theatre gave shape to philosophy: love, duty, freedom, and the weight of conscience.

The Philosophers and the Stage

Later came philosophy. Descartes taught me to question what I was told. Voltaire pushed me to speak against hypocrisy. Kant showed me that doing the right thing often costs more than comfort.

The theatre gave those lessons shape. Corneille’s Le Cid introduced me to Chimène, torn between love and honor. Horace thundered with loyalty to Rome above self. Racine turned the drama inward, showing love as torment and conscience as cage.

Books deepened the lessons further. Dostoevsky’s stories showed me the weight of guilt and the struggle between right and wrong. Saint-Exupéry reminded me that what matters most is invisible to the eye, that love carries tenderness but also responsibility. And Don Quixote, foolish and noble all at once, taught me that even chasing impossible dreams has its dignity. Sometimes wonder itself is worth holding on to.

At the other end of the spectrum, the playful worlds of Arlequin and Barbara Cartland offered lightness, romance, and escape.

These voices left their mark. They showed me that love and freedom always meet at a crossroads. Passion without liberty becomes torment. Duty without feeling becomes a prison. And yet, lightness has its place too: sometimes what saves us is not the gravity of conscience, but the simple act of allowing ourselves to dream.

The Raw Edge

At the same time, I was drawn to music that spoke to a different side of me.

Metallica gave me riffs and catharsis, carrying longing and rebellion. Their sound reminded me that freedom is not always quiet, and honesty is not always soft.

Classical music and old French songs offered another dimension: elegance, order, nostalgia, and beauty that endures. Together with Metallica, they gave me contrast. One roared, the other soothed, yet both whispered the same wisdom: love without freedom is not love at all.

Oreo’s Lesson

Years later, my cat Oreo carried this lesson back to me. I adored him, but I also wanted him to be free, so I let him roam. At first he always returned, sometimes with little offerings from the world beyond the walls. His coming and going felt like trust, as if he knew he had a home to return to.

Until one day, he did not.

I searched for months, posting his photo, walking the neighborhood, calling his name. Nearly a year later, I learned that someone else had taken him in, renamed him, and given him a different life.

The grief was sharp. He was no longer my Oreo. And yet the lesson was undeniable: when the door is open, the choice belongs to the one who walks through it. Love, like freedom, can never be forced.

Oreo, my beloved cat, who taught me that love cannot be forced and freedom always carries a choice.

A Woman’s Lens

Perhaps this is why I have always stepped back when competition entered love. Some women feel driven to win. To me, that has never felt like love. If a man wants another, he should go. If he wants me, he should fight for me, not the other way around.

I do not wish to be chosen because I endured longer. I want to be chosen because presence feels natural, willing, and whole.

I know this may sound traditional, and others may feel differently. There is no single right way to love. This is simply the truth that has lived in me.

A Gentle Middle Ground

Still, I have learned that freedom and closeness do not need to cancel each other out.

There is space to say gently, this hurt me.

There is room to pause before walking away and say, I need presence, not distance.

There is honesty in letting someone know the impact of their absence, not to control them, but to give them a chance to choose clearly.

I am beginning to practice this in small ways: by naming when something feels harmful or too heavy, by saying when a request feels like pressure, by choosing to voice what does not sit right instead of disappearing in silence.

Another time, I paused instead of withdrawing. I said, I care about this, and if you do too, can we sit together for fifteen minutes and talk it through? It was not about control, but about creating space for choice.

I am not drastic by nature. I do give chances. I forgive. Sometimes that makes my boundaries harder to see. But I believe the softest form of freedom is not in disappearing, but in staying long enough to be fully seen, and then trusting whether love can hold that space with care.

Because freedom matters, but so does safety. The kind of love I seek now is one where both can exist: openness without fear, closeness without control.

What Stays With Me

The bird in the cage, the philosophers on the page, the novels of conscience and allegory, the playful romances, the voices of Madonna, the roar of Metallica, the melodies of classical and old French songs, and the cat who never came back all carry the same truth.

Love cannot be forced. It reveals itself in freedom.

And maybe love, at its best, is not the weight that tethers us, but the wind that helps us rise.

If you have ever loved in silence, waited too long, or felt unseen, maybe your story was never about someone else choosing you. Maybe it was asking you to choose yourself first.

Let that longing be not the chain, but the wings that carry you home. Because freedom matters, but so does safety.

The wind, the sea, the light: learning that love, at its best, is not a tether but a lift.