View From the Top of the Furniture

As humans… we are capable of so much more than the little tiny boxes we put ourselves in.  We’ve built our box, big enough that we can move around in a way that gives us the illusion of freedom and the deception of being the masters of our own fate. 

We have built the walls so high that the light comes in for a few moments in the day and we can bask in its glow if we stand steadfast in the center of the room barely breathing. We have tricked ourselves in to believing that we don’t need the light to survive, that our world inside our box has enough to sustain life – as we know it.

Storm after storm has come through battering the walls of our boxes.  The wind makes the walls shake and sends fragmented pieces of plaster scattering across the floor.  We race to make repairs before the next storm beats down on our box. 
With each fix, with each coat of plaster the box becomes smaller. And those walls that we think we are repairing are becoming thin and weak. So we push everything to the walls for safety and security.  Security is another word for fear.

Then one day in between storms, in a desperation for more light, we climb up onto the top of the furniture we’ve pushed to the side to reinforce our fortress. The table which holds the couch, which holds the chair – we climb up and up until we can pull ourselves to the top of our wall and look out at the destruction the storm has caused.

Instead of devastation we see a brilliant light which at first must be shielded from our eyes. As we adjust to the light and our vision becomes clearer it’s almost inconceivable. 

The wind that has been battering our walls – isn’t wind at all. Its laughter and joyous song.   The shaking that had knocked apart the inside of our box is the digging and planting of new life. People are sweeping up the debris of their own boxes and dancing around the bonfire.

But at this point our fingers get tired of holding us up to peer over the wall of our box. Climbing back down is hard and heaviness falls on our shoulders the closer we get to the floor of our box. Only when we fall the last step and land on the ground does the realization hit that the air was easier to breath at the top of the wall.

The brightness of the world living outside the walls is almost inconceivable yet it tugs at our subconscious. The climb up and over the wall would not be a difficult one – but life outside the box would be different. Inside the box is a life that is known – regardless of how tumultuous; regardless of how disheartening and captive. It is the life we know.  It is a harsh realization but it’s true…

"The security that we clutch to is strangling our ability to breath."

And so we climb….