How Big is Your room?

I’ve been oddly fascinated with abduction movies recently, the most significant of which was Room, my favorite movie of 2015. It’s about a teen girl that was abducted and kept in an underground room for many years. During that time, she birthed a son. I found most interesting the contrasting perspectives between the mom and son.

The boy had never known anything outside this room. It was his entire world. The mom (played by Brie Larson who won the Oscar:) lived in the world before and was therefore aware of their confined predicament. Both were equally held captive, but their perspectives completely different.

Our lives are no different. In some ways we are aware of a bigger world out there that we want to get to, but can’t access it – a job with more freedom, a relationship that isn’t suffocating, a city that doesn’t depress you. But there is a locked door, a key, and a captor in your way.

In the movie, it was a sociopath that was keeping her from this world. But who is your keeper? Who has you locked in a room? More importantly, what belief system is keeping you captured?

Unless you live in a country with limited personal freedoms, your keeper is an aspect of yourself. It is a belief or a thought pattern. And that belief is most likely rooted in security.

Being in a room, a prison, or a life-sucking 9-to-5 job comes with its perks. It’s secure and you get fed. Your keeper probably won’t kill you. But it comes at the cost of abuse, or best-case scenario, your freedom to be who you really are or can be in this life.

Kids need and crave security. Why? They can’t take care of themselves. They can’t reach the counter let alone work a stove or drive to the grocery store to get food. They are dependent upon adults. This scared kid is still alive and well in most of us and why we as adults still crave the idea of security. But here’s the thing, we can take care of ourselves.

And so a push-pull conflict is created – our inner child’s desire for security and our soul’s need for freedom and expansion.

There are also aspects of ourselves that don’t know we’re even in a room. Like the boy in the movie, we don’t realize there is another world out there beyond this tiny world we’ve created to keep us safe. All there is is a tiny skylight that gives us a glimpse into a bigger world - whispers from our soul.

In watching these movies, I’ve had to look honestly at the ways I’ve kept myself small, confined, and safe. My soul has had to intervene via Universal forces to kick me out of these rooms several times. Thankfully so, because there is a great big, beautiful world out there of which I’ve only scratched the surface.

We’re all living in a room. The only question is: How big is yours?

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The Fear of Empty Space

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