Yesterday, a French friend asked me to define the word ‘yoke’. She looked in her bilingual dictionary and came up with ‘constraint’. But it’s more than that, I think, and I tried to explain that it can be a mark of servitude. Or slavery. Or it can be a metaphor for a burden, anything that keeps you coupled to a problem.
Today I passed this yoke, and took the photo to show her.
A yoke is a binding thing. A piece of wood fastened to the necks of two animals, then attached to a plough, forces them to work obediently and stops them escaping. When the yoke is removed, and especially once it’s nailed to the top of a post, the animals are free to roam and go where they please. Independence.
Thanks Ailsa for the ‘Independence’ photo challenge.