What Would Happen?

My whole life I have done what "they" have told me.

I have said the words they wanted me to say.

I have dressed the way they wanted me to dress.

I have lived the way they wanted.

Forty plus years they have controlled who I am.

Who are "they" you may ask?

Who is this shadowy influence on this free man's life?

They are my parents, my family, my teachers,

my professors, my friends, my pastors, my church family, 
my neighbors, and my wife.

What would happen if I turned away from all they want from me?

What would happen ...

If I did what I wanted?

If I said what I wanted?

If I lived how I wanted?

If I sought my own first of all?

What would happen if I exposed them to all I truly am,

All that I let lay hidden within?

What would happen if I let them see all the contradictions?

All the incongruities?
All that doesn't jive with their notions of who I ought to be?

What if I turned my back on all they want and ask of me?

Am I wrong to submit to them?

Am I untrue to my cowboy ideals?

Turning my back on speaking plain, 

And self-reliance?

My cowboy ideals would be fine if it was just me,

My horse, my gun at my side,

But I sleep in a soft bed on a city street,

Not in a bedroll under the stars.

I work in an office, 
Shop in a Wal-Mart,

Walking through a world filled with people dear to me.

There are no sagebrush or cattle in my landscape.

The question of ‘What will happen?’ will lay unanswered,

Because I am not free.

My liberty is bound to those I love.