A woman walks into a room. There is nothing special about this room. It is white, empty and average-sized. Neutral. The only thing special at all is that she has never been in it before. And she shrinks and looks for a corner.
Life.
A man walks into a similar room. It is empty. He has never been there before. The room is still average. He is stifled and immediately seeks a way out.
Life.
For that woman, the room is too much. For that man, the room is too small.
The woman, yelled at often when she was young, had grown up in a sea of anger. She learned to be small and stay that way, until something or someone proved that it was safe. It wasn’t safe often enough.
And the man, well, he’d grown up around sickness. His brother. Severely asthmatic. He had learned to hold his outer movements back, tightly wrapped around the inner ones. This was not his nature. Forced to be calm, while everything yearned to jump out.
Today, she is a professional but crumples at the slightest raise of a voice. Every day she struggles some.
Today, he is unable to stay in one place, with one person or at one job for too long. He has big dreams, but his restlessness wins.
Life.
If we don’t break the chain of history, it continues. Distorting our experience. More for some. Less for others. We walk into an empty room, and we bring our story with us ~ danger, limitations, loneliness, lost-ness, failure, uncertainty…
We fail to fully see what is real – the blank walls, light, space, air, openness, possibilities. We fail to fully enter a place with curiosity, where we can move, think, adapt, create and learn.
And yet…every day is this empty room. Yes, it has our life in it, but the day itself is new. Unknown. Empty of our past.
So just for today…Enter. Breathe. Feel the ground. Experience the space. Sense the possibilities.
Leave those heavy bags at the door and be in it.
Life.