We are all just prisoners here

We were recently listening to Hotel California again, and one line stayed with us long after the music faded: "We are all just prisoners here, of our own device... You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."

It’s haunting — not just because of the melody, but because of the unsettling truth it hints at. Sometimes, life feels exactly like that — a grand, beautiful illusion. Full of movement, choices, and color on the surface, yet beneath it all, a quiet sense of being trapped. Not by walls or systems alone, but by our own thoughts, fears, expectations, and the identities we've carefully constructed over time.

At other times, it feels like a well-decorated maze. We move through routines, ambitions, desires — always seeking the next thing that promises escape, relief, or meaning. Yet slowly, a realization sets in: what holds us captive isn’t out there. It’s in here.

- We carry invisible prisons — comparison, old wounds, societal scripts, internal pressures.

- We numb with distractions — productivity, relationships, entertainment — but underneath it all, there’s often a quiet discontent. An itch we can’t quite scratch. A question we can’t quite answer.

- Maybe it's the weight of the roles we perform.

- Maybe it's the stories we've inherited and never questioned.

- Maybe the "prison" isn’t a place at all, but a mindset — a loop of seeking, chasing, comparing, never arriving.

I don’t have the answers. But perhaps naming that feeling — sitting with it — is the first glimpse of freedom. Because before we can step out of the prison, we have to notice we’re in one.

The real question is What is the way out — and how does truly free really feel?