Let the Eagle Soar & The Lazy Days of Hazing

I attended a training workshop for counselors, and the presenter asked us to imagine a giant eagle stuck inside of a narrow-necked glass jar. He explained that the eagle longed to escape, but it knew that it couldn’t possibly squeeze through that small of an opening; it was trapped. The presenter then asked us how the eagle could possibly escape the jar. I tentatively raised my hand and asked Wouldn’t the eagle have to imagine that it could fly free first?

The presenter pointed at me, and said Yes! The beginning of any journey, our personal journey and especially for the journeys of our clients, is to first imagine that it’s possible.

The eagle represents the spirit or soul part of us who is beautiful, strong, and who loves its freedom. The jar with the narrow neck symbolizes our life or parts of our life that make us feel restricted, jammed up, or plain stuck, the things that keep us from moving forward. The glass is molded by our hopes and fears that shape and form our beliefs and that perhaps tell us we’re not quite good enough or loved enough.

How would it feel to break free from the bonds of those fearful beliefs?

Use your imagination:

1) Pretend that the fears about not having enough time or money are children, and send them outside to play. While they're gone, take a few moments to imagine a life that you would like to live. What would you do? Where would you go? Most importantly, who would you be?

2) You've won the two-billion-dollar lottery! How would you manage the money? What would you spend it on? How would having all the money in the world change your life? How would it change you (or would it)?

Get creative and let your mind design a fun life, one in which you might find yourself content or satisfied. What does it look like? Visualize a life with less fear, obligations, guilt, or other restrictions. Changes begin by imagining a better existence for ourselves.

For many of us, we spend much of our time focusing on all that may be wrong in our lives. Perhaps feeling guilty about wanting more or convinced we don’t deserve it, we might imagine failing at our jobs, getting fired, and becoming homeless. We might imagine that our spouse or partner doesn’t love us enough but we're stuck with this monster.

What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I be happy?

Why is everything so hard?

You have become the eagle trapped in the glass jar with no way to escape. But is that the truth? Are you truly only a product of your circumstances? Do you believe that you have been stuffed into the jar and made helpless by others? Maybe you were bullied into climbing into the jar. Maybe you were talked into it. Maybe.

Even if all the world conspired to trap you, to keep you trapped, and to humiliate and laugh at you through the glass, is that the end of your story? Stuck there forever because of them? Doesn’t that just make you mad? Who the hell put them in charge anyway?

You can stay in the jar and spend your days blaming the them who put you there, or maybe, just maybe, you can get honest with yourself and wonder if maybe you played a part that helped land yourself in the glass jar. Well, that doesn’t feel good at all. But what if? If there’s even a tiny part of you that feels that possibility, then you have the beginning, a tiny part to be sure, that will help free you from that confounded jar. Is it possible, you wonder?

I have to imagine that it’s possible. If I can do that, then I cannot only imagine escaping, but I can imagine putting the energy of my thoughts and mind toward creating what I want, instead of focusing on what I don’t want. If in some way, I created any part of my jar, then I can create the way to escape it. I can do it.

I am a beautiful, strong eagle, and I am free.

I soar into the vast sky as I am meant to. I am free.

Back in the 60s, when I was preparing to enter high school, we attended a pep rally just for us freshman girls that outlined all the sports, clubs, and ways to get involved. I was excited and enthusiastic about joining everything. The only catch was that we had to survive a fun challenge day before we could join.

The senior cheerleaders described this fun challenge day as thus: we had to wear our clothes inside out, wear a bathing cap over our hair, and wear no makeup. If we could survive this, then we were free to join anything we liked. The cheerleaders warned us though, that they would be patrolling the halls, and if they found anything out of place, that they would mark our cheeks with red lipstick. They roared with glee, and we laughed, too. But inside, I was terrified.

These days it’s called hazing, and it’s not fun but humiliating and degrading. The anxiety I felt over this obstacle to all the promised fun of high school, was debilitating. I felt stuffed into that skinny-necked jar by the cheerleaders and by a silent administration that condoned this kind of fun. The glass of my jar was insulated with anxiety and fear. I was trapped and could barely eat or sleep. It worsened the closer the day approached. I didn’t bother telling my family—I would have been told to stop being ridiculous. My friends faced the same fate; I was on my own and in a private hell. All I had to do was spend a day being humiliated, laughed at, and tormented by the senior cheerleaders. If I wanted to start out high school being part of a new community, that was all I had to do. That was all. But I couldn’t get out of the jar. I was trapped. (To be fair, I'm sure that there were some girls who thought that this would be fun and were not bothered at all.)

But not me. I had an abundance of enthusiasm but zero confidence in myself. How would I survive the degradation? How could I get around this? After weeks of lying in bed shaking with worry, I began to think of ways to escape the mental and emotional strain. I thought about not participating at all and what that would mean. The decision suddenly became very clear. I would not do it. Could I give up all the clubs and fun and new life of high school? Yes, it was a no brainer. I could not allow myself to endure that torture. Once the decision was made, the anxiety, stress, and horror lifted. The jar melted away, and I was free.

This experience taught me to rely on myself, to trust myself, and to not take the bullying of others to heart. I lost some things, however. My best friend, who participated in the hazing, crying and humiliated, was further devastated when she saw me and realized I had opted out. I lost her trust and her friendship that day. I lost out on being part of that group and culture of high school.

Was it worth it to sacrifice those things? We all have tough decisions to make in our lives, and the answers don’t always come easily. We make the difficult choices and hope to survive. The trial of a 13-year-old may seem small in comparison to the larger scheme of life, but it is these kinds of trials that shape us and help to create the kind of life we want to live. Even at that young age, I chose freedom and self-empowerment, living outside of the jar. I still choose that today.