Can a wounded animal smell it's own blood? does it know that it's it's own life essence seeping out, leaking draining. It knows the pain but it's always known pain suffering is the natural order. Pain is the teacher don't tread there, don't eat that, don't mess with them.
I've known none of this. I was domesticated a cog in a system. I had; an education, a job,a wife, mortgage, a house, two now grown up children, savings and a reasonable pension. They arrived in that order and each was as much of commodity as all the other trinkets I managed to surround myself with. carrots and the chains for the model citizen, the donkey which keeps the cogs moving.
Along with the heavy shackles of my commodities I've also carried the burden of having gap in my soul. A void which I couldn’t fill. A niggling thought that the world was rotten or fake. That we're slaves to something ridiculous, a system we created without thought, a system we're now tied too.
That's why I got on the plane happy for the first time in my life. I'd plugged the void with an assurity that I was doing the right thing. I had cashed out of the system and my heart felt lighter. As the wounded animal I had licked my wounds and I had miraculously survived to fight again.