Stuck in Frozenness

“A book should be an ice-axe to break the frozen sea within us.”

-Franz Kafka

'How can a book be an ice axe?' I asked myself when I first read Kafka’s quote, befuddled. I kept on reading the quote over and over again. Then it occurred to me what a strong impact this simile has, how true it is. A book contains a thousand ideas, ideas that don’t exist in reality. A sea contains a thousand colorful creatures. Sometimes thunderstorms create the biggest of waves that tower above us, waiting to come crashing down and wiping everything in its path out of the way. Sometimes it’s very calm and very soothing, the constant rhythm of the waves rolling to the shore. What an exciting place it is. The image of frozen sea, almost an impossibility, except at the extremes of Earth. The things you look for, where are the thunderstorms that make us panic? Where is that constant rhythm that soothes some like a lullaby? Where are those colorful creatures that give the sea its spark? The worst part of it is that you know these things exist, but you are forced to go through life without it. Like you are inside a prison that bans life itself! The dullness of it all burdening you inside your prison, there is no way out. So the sea in its frozen state is inert.

Frozen seas are reality. I’m not one who lets myself live a life of darkness. Life is short, why be a prisoner? The only way of denying this desolation is entering the lively realm of books. There is so much potential in one person, everyone has an imagination, everyone has ideas, everyone has a sea within them. But it is frozen, because in reality there is cruelness. It paralyzes us and blinds us from all the finer things in life, and people are so used to this that no one ever tries to break free. People get stuck in this horrible frozenness that burdens us, locks us deep in a dark, dull prison for eternity. It’s so motionless that some people don’t even bother to try moving.

The frozen sea is ‘within’ us, implying that it is engraved in our soul, buried deep under the surface, the act that we put on to fit into reality. We are so occupied with our boring reality, frozen in our mundane lives, that it never really occurs to us what could really be. But the people that have the strength to break free, they are the ones that should be valued most. For they are the ones who climb higher to show their potential to create an ice-axe to break this frozen sea; the light that we need to shine on us in this darkness. They are the ones who write the books that give us the hallucination of being set free from our lifeless prisons. But if the hallucinations are powerful enough, they can be transformed into a reality. And one day, people will be set free.