Ultimately, all of our searching in life is for what we believe will release us from something that presently restricts us. If a man or woman is genuinely earnest, he or she will go down a countless number of different roads in order to find freedom. But you can't set out to find something without you being the one who is going to find it, which means that for each different pursuit, you assume a new role, a new identity.
We are created to be impressionable. In one respect it is a great gift to have the ability to receive impressions and at the same time be conscious of them. When we were growing up, we were essentially searching for an identity -- trying to figure out who to be. At a very early age we all began to imitate what we saw outside of us according to what each of us individually thought would make us feel good and/or remove what we thought were our limitations. And so basically our lives became a search for freedom through imitation. And as we continue to imitate, we become more and more identified with the role that we have taken on, and anything that challenges the role we have assumed actually strengthens the "need" to be that person.
Imitation is captivity, but the sleeping mind does not know that. You can never be free as a human being as long as you have a role of any kind at all. How much freedom does a person playing a role in a stage-play have? None. That person must act from and say only what is authorized by the script. Everyone that you are in relationship with plays out a certain role, and if they do not play their roles according to the script, you will find yourself confused over what to do next. This is where blame comes in because if your friends and family do not fulfill their proper roles, then you do not know who you are supposed to be.
In a manner of speaking, if you really want to be free you cannot have an identity. If you have a role, you can't have fun because the "director" within yourself will not let you step anywhere outside the boundaries of your assigned part. What punishes you is something inside of you that says, "You did not hit your mark properly." You must realize that this internal director is not your friend.
You are not supposed to be anything other than a free human being. If you want freedom you must become more conscious of so-called limitations instead of trying to escape them. The only sense of limitation you have is that the internal judge is forever measuring the role you have assumed through imitation, and comparing it to what this same judge thinks you are supposed to do in the moment. The clearer that this becomes, the more freedom there will be. The mind that awakens to itself begins to shed the role instead of protecting it. Become conscious of the director within that punishes you for not playing out your role, and see for yourself the necessity to completely walk off the stage altogether.