Just Me and My Cage

"But you're here in the dark in a little box with a fellow who might know less than you,
Then you'll hurry home and lock the locks, another box to climb in to. "

I was listening to some of my music the other day and heard this line in a song from one of my musicals (challenge to musical lovers: can you tell which one it's from?) and started to think. It's a sad image, don't you think? Our home being this box, probably that we create to protect us but just ends up blocking us out from the rest of the world. It starts off as a box and ends up as a cage.

Metaphorically speaking, we cage ourselves in all the time. Mostly from fear. Why else do we create locks? Why else do we build walls that we hide within? From fear, essentially. From fear of what might be past the locks and outside the walls that could hurt us. And the cages we place around us are much the same thing. We are afraid of what might happen if we let ourselves out of those cages. And so we all manage, somehow, to survive in this big wide world by keeping ourselves close within protective walls.

It sounds stupid, doesn't it? When you talk about it like this, it sounds like some existential poetry. These big metaphorical cages seem ridiculous. But as much as you might say "I wouldn't cage myself in like that. What's the point?" I could bet good money that you still do it, out of doubt or worry, in some way or another. Maybe you just decide that you don't want to try something new, or maybe you don't let yourself get too close to someone, or show people your true self.

There's a big bright beautiful world out there (another musical reference for you guys and gals) that hardly any of us actually see. So get rid of those bars and look at it.

That's my word of wisdom for the day anyway.

In other news, draft #4 of The Twelve is finished and is now being read by the assistant editor of Murdoch books for another review and perhaps some advice on how to go about getting it published. Fingers crossed! I was thinking about posting another chapter of my book here, so leave a comment if you want to read more and I'll post chapter 2 next time.

Until next time...

(added note: I just realised that I never actually posted all of chapter one, only a snippet, so if you want to read the whole thing I can post that as well !)