[Essay] We Dance Resiliently in the Cage Called Constraint

Imposed rules and stifling constraints handed down from above. In our daily lives, where we feel suffocated, how are we supposed to 'catch our breath'? This is a story about the 'tenacious wisdom' of humans who survive resiliently inside an invisible cage.

[Essay] We Dance Resiliently in the Cage Called Constraint

The city of Beijing is being repainted at a breakneck speed, as always. It is like an irresistible, muddy torrent—the strong will of the authorities. The words I heard under that sky still linger in my ears.

'For every policy from the state, there is a countermeasure from the people.'

An acquaintance working in the private sector said this calmly while gazing at the neon lights flowing outside the window. Where there is a policy above, there is a countermeasure below. This is not mere irony. It is the resilient essence of humanity that has been repeated throughout history.

Do you not feel a similar sense of suffocation in your daily work? Rules. Budgets. Top-down directives. We are always fighting within invisible frameworks. But humans are surprisingly resilient.

Take, for example, those long, narrow houses lining the canals of the Netherlands. They look like toys and are very charming. Yes, you have seen them in photos or videos, haven't you? But that design is actually the product of the people's tenacity against a strict tax system that taxed based on the width of the frontage.

If you cannot make it wide, you just make it narrow and tall. To carry luggage into a narrow frontage, you attach a hook to the roof. Behind the beautiful facade, there pulses the wisdom of finding loopholes in the law and the human energy that seeks to extract maximum richness from limited circumstances.

We like to believe that 'design' and 'expression' are like running freely through an empty field. But in reality, that might not be the case. How do we carve out the optimal solution within a cold, hard framework? Struggling inside an invisible cage while searching for the most beautiful steps—that is the true nature of creation.

Behind the seemingly neatly arranged rules, someone's 'countermeasure' is alive and well again today. It is a waste to just lament the constraints imposed from above. What kind of 'countermeasure' shall we set up there?

When you think of it that way, don't the stifling work in front of you and the familiar city scenery start to look a little more endearing?

Resiliently and lightly. Because it is precisely within the framework that we can dance beautifully.