Our prison and how to escape

I've pretty much decided fate has stepped in, and if Grace (the one who wanted to marry me but do nothing otherwise, and has major problems) is all there is (whatever I've done to bring in new material) and she doesn't send me running for the exit like the other offers made over the years and improves over time I may as well keep going. It's nothing like I wanted or expected from a relationship (actually a marriage as that's the only relationship she's having) but then again how many people marry someone thinking it is and find otherwise sooner or later?

Which leads me to today's lesson (I haven't much activity to report, but can use what there was for it), and it's not a personal one about me, but an example everyone can use. For the lucky few who are happy with all aspects of their lives, they've probably got there already without even realising how. But how many can really say that? I always put our lives as a prison, each cell being provided with different facilities and each prison having different people and freedoms within it, and we must make the most of them but know we cannot leave so that is our life for the forseeable future.

Obviously the one difference is prisons only have single sexes, but then again so does my life so pretty similar in that area as well for some of us. The women we all see around us don't count as they have female staff in most male prisons, but they are not for the pleasure of the inmates, as are none of the women around me with rare exceptions. The interesting part begins when the prison authorities start to change the rules and facilities, and one day you get a colour TV, or lose some priviliges. This is random stuff which evens out over time. The guidance then begins when your release time comes close, and you start being prepared for the outside world, with maybe day releases or full access to the garden. It's nothing about what you've done, these things happen and someone is doing it. Some even get released altogether, but only in books and anecdotes, and no one even can be certain there is a world outside as all they are aware of is their prison.

Human beings have prison guards and governors, but they never see them or even know who they are. It's either like a joint effort, where a million people buy a lottery ticket and one wins, or one sided where you dig up the money when doing the garden. The guidance comes when you are supposed to be going to an arrangement, it's cancelled, you find out after you've left and make a detour to do some shopping, realise it's lunchtime and go somewhere you'd never been to before as you're in an area you'd never normally stop but the call came half way there not to carry on and that was where you turned round, see a cafe over the road, go for a meal, and are about to leave when someone phones and delays you for ten more minutes. They are about to hang up and an old girlfriend you hadn't seen for 20 years walks in who's come back home to visit her family after moving abroad, and she's just got divorced and no longer has a reason to stay there, you get talking, exchange numbers and it takes off.

Now take every single step on that story. If one single element had not taken place you wouldn't have met her, as you never go to that area and she was going back abroad later that week. You basically had to be in that exact spot at that exact moment or nothing would ever have happened. You can't arrange that by chance many times, and when it starts happening for different gifts, large and small, over and over again, you realise it can't be random any more, that wouldn't make sense. And if it's not random then someone must be controlling it, it couldn't happen otherwise.