Liberty Lost

I had eight ladies attend my class at the detention center yesterday and three of them will get certificates for attending all of the classes and doing their homework. We covered a fable called "The Horse, The Deer and the Hunter" - in Spanish "El Caballo, El Ciervo y el Cazador." The plot goes like this: a horse and a deer coexisted peacefully in a beautiful forest for a long time. One day, the deer made fun of the horse and stuck his tongue out at the other animal. The horse was infuriated, and chased the deer through the forest, but the deer was faster and more agile and got away. Each time they bumped into each other thereafter, the horse would chase the deer to no avail.

One day, the horse met up with a hunter in the forest and asked the hunter to ride him to find the deer, and take a shot at the deer with his arrows. The hunter did so, and missed the deer when he shot. The deer ran off and left the forest for good. The horse was satisfied with this outcome and told the hunter his services were no longer required, so he could get off and take the saddle and reins with him.  Well, of course the hunter was thrilled with riding the horse and had no intentions of giving the horse back his freedom; instead, he took the horse back to his farm and kept him in servitude forevermore.

The moral of the fable is that vengeance only leads to more trouble, but I missed the other main point of the story which was more relevant to the detainees - that the horse's punishment was the loss of his liberty. The ladies in class yesterday all picked up on the idea that vengeance is bad, but the horse's loss of his freedom had a much greater impact. I was entirely blind not to anticipate that; thoughtless until one of the ladies said "at least the deer got to go to another forest - the horse was locked up for good - just like me." She drooped as she said this, and could not lift her eyes to meet mine. She wore the blue uniform that signified her offense as lack of documentation alone, and I could not help but wonder, "what are we doing here?"