People Are Like Tree Frogs
A tree frog believes it has the most to gain from living in a tree in the same way that a person lives their life according to beliefs about who they are and either cannot or will not see outside of it. The tree frog who has never been introduced to a means of living that would sustain it without the trees, would never understand that it might live elsewhere despite there being many circumstances that it would be adapted to.
Much like the person who believes their lifestyle is intrinsic to who they are, they carry beliefs about themselves they are certain they cannot do without as if the pain of living the way they do is somehow just as much a part of who they are as the sound of their voice or the color of their eyes, that they would somehow be compromising their integrity by choosing a path that would lead to greater fulfillment, greater meaning and sustenance, perhaps to more confidence and self assurance or to a path that would not simply necessitate that they continue to make the same mistakes over and over again.
They return to the trees because they do not see how they can be more than what they are right then and there. In the tree frog, we are more likely to call this instinct, despite the fact that a person will return to their old ways of seeing the world with the same frequency that a tree frog would return to the trees. We might suppose that it is not instinct in the tree frog any more than it would be instinct in the person.
Perhaps it is a matter of the scale of our perceptions about what we can do and who we can be. For condemning ourselves to a life we are unsatisfied with is the same as condemning ourselves to beliefs about who we are that make us unhappy.
