#13 Your Imaginary Cage
~ 15 minute read time ~
Have you ever been to a bowling alley and tried your best, but the bowling balls are really heavy and it’s difficult to put it where you want it to go? Every time it’s your turn, you tell yourself you’re going to knock down those pins yet you keep ending up in the gutters?
Then some kind person offers to put up the guard rails for you to give you a chance of keeping the ball in the lane long enough to actually knock a few down. It’s a bit embarrassing to start with but at least it allows you to play a few rounds without completely failing. A big part of you wants to say “Yes please, it’s better than nothing.”
Is it though? Isn’t that just giving up and playing it safe? What if you politely declined to have the guard rails up and just gave it a few more tries? It’s only bowling, a little bit of sporting embarrassment isn’t that painful is it? Ok you’ll still find the gutter a few/many more times, but you may even get a strike next time imagine that! If you got a strike with the rails up, wouldn’t that cheapen the achievement for you? What’s worse - trying but failing or not even trying in the first place?
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
Why play it safe? Wouldn’t you rather keep getting gutter balls if it meant you might eventually get a strike. The problem with safety rails is that you begin to rely on them because you know they’re always there, so you don’t learn the proper technique. You know you can’t get a gutter ball, so you don’t focus on the process and you just chuck the ball down the lane and happily accept knocking 2 or 3 pins down as it bounces from side-to-side down the lane.
We aim to avoid pain and embarrassment so much in life that we build an imaginary cage around us. It may keep us safe and within the limits but it also acts like a prison. You stop reaching and striving because you sit happily. Your imaginary cage or your ‘comfort zone’ is cosy, warm and free from any surprises. You tell yourself that’s fine because you don’t like uncertainty whilst being in your comfort zone you have total certainty.
“One is never afraid of the unknown; one is afraid of the known coming to an end.”
The problem comes when enough time passes and you keep getting served up more of the same stuff, day after day after day until maybe one day, you realise that life is what happens OUTSIDE of your comfort zone. There’s a nagging feeling deep down that you just can’t put your finger on. You see people who are prepared to put themselves out there. They do things that scare them and you wish you could try it but IT’S JUST NOT PRACTICAL. That’s what you tell yourself anyway.
We all have to have day jobs, we can’t all be entrepreneurs can we?! Can we?
Safety first and protection are sensible beliefs, it’s what kept the tribe alive in more volatile and dangerous periods in history. We must keep ourselves alive to ensure the survival of our species, but the human race has been around for a while now so I think that bit is covered. Why don’t we look to not only survive but to genuinely thrive? What freedoms have we given up in the name of convenience and comfort?
We can’t do anything without having a Facebook-friendly photo ready to post, otherwise did it actually happen? Or, we can’t eat that meal until after it’s been snapped, edited, colour-corrected, tagged then posted on Insta (cough, I’m as guilty as anyone for this #awks #hypocrite).
A regular, salaried job is a relatively recent thing. I mean, back in the old days - the farmers worked the fields then reaped the benefits of harvest, monthly pay cheques were not a thing.
Whereas now, we work our steady jobs and feel mostly dead each day until PAY DAY YAY! Then repeat until the next one. We give up our most precious commodity, the only thing over which we have complete ownership and the only thing that we can’t make more of… OUR TIME. We only have so much time on this Earth and we trade it for money. If you love your job then this trade might be one you’re happy making, but if, like many people, you don’t then it becomes almost a Hell on Earth.
The dreaded Soul-destroying job.
I know we all have families and commitments, but on our deathbeds will we look back and wonder if we wished we’d spent more time at work? Or rather, more time with our kids, or playing with the dog, or at the beach, or writing that book, or painting that piece of artwork, or that hobby we always wanted to get round to?
How often have we said “one day, some day”? The problem is that one day, some day never comes. Or if it finally comes around, it’s not until we’re retired, the flame may have dulled slightly and we may not have the energy or the health to enable us to do it as fully as we’d hoped?
Why do we allow ourselves to be boxed in so easily? Why do we give up our wild sides and ‘settle down’ - that phrase sounds so innocuous yet so unsatisfying doesn’t it? Settle down? Kids don’t talk like that do they! “One day I’ll grow up so I can settle down”. Why don’t we want more for ourselves, why don’t we AIM HIGHER?
You were born kicking and screaming into this world, with a beating heart. We are sent here for more than we’re here for right now. You just need to see it, feel it and then claim it. Granted, the difficult part is in finding what your thing is but the spiritual path is one where you strive to find it. You may go down a few side alleys along the way but you’ll have a richness to your experience.
Don’t live life like a barnacle, clinging on - be the whale!
There is so much fear in the world, especially right now with Covid-19 kicking our collective asses but I do get the sense that there’s a broad awakening. We’ve all been forced into lockdown for 6+ months and a lot of us have pondered our very existence, our reason for being on this spinning rock as we fly through space. I think we’re slowly realising that a lot of the old needs to make way for the new. We need less materialism, more purpose. We need less anger, more kindness. We need more compassion, less division. More creative solutions.
We wouldn’t use ancient maps to find our way around our modern cities would we? So why do we persist in continuing with ancient thinking, outdated ideals and approaches towards entirely modern problems? We all need to raise our level of awareness and look to educate the ignorant. Too many are asleep at the wheel.
All of the bad stuff - polarised societies, racism, wars, persecution etc are examples of groups of people acting out their inner fears, that’s only because they’re caged in their thought prisons. We all need to engage with each other, talk and learn about our brothers and sisters and get rid of all of our self-limiting beliefs.
The things that limit us are often self-imposed. We become so conditioned by all of the messaging around us via mainstream media, social media and wider society that we think many of our opinions are our own when actually they’re not. By spending so much time on our screens like ostriches with our heads buried in the virtual sand, we absorb so much information and the thoughts we have are someone else’s.
That random purchase that came out of nowhere, you just had to have that thing - you were targeted by cookies, marketing and big tech logging every single thing you look at online, every single finger flick and screen gesture is recorded. They know what you’re going to buy before you do. That strong political opinion you suddenly seemed to have? Probably suggested to you in that persuasive YouTube video you watched one evening. Funny how you didn’t have such a strong opinion on that specific topic before?
It’s almost a Pavlovian response to life. We live contained lives and do jobs we may not like just for that monthly injection of cash, our salaries are essentially intermittent positive rewards and we behave accordingly. We’ve become lab rats pushing levers for pellets. Do the job, get the pay.
There is hope, we are still the authors of our own experience but we need to become more conscious and more aware of our thoughts, actions and behaviours. As soon as we become aware of something, our understanding develops and we make more informed, better choices.
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”
Instead of repeating your daily patterns unconsciously, start taking little moments to bring awareness to any moment - when you’re brushing your teeth, when you’re drinking a warm cup of tea, when you’re walking - became aware of the deliberate nature of your actions. Imbue each action with an intention. By doing that you start to live more intentionally, you feel more in control and you feel less helpless.
Make awareness and intentional action a daily habit and you become more prepared to welcome the Unknown. You realise the Unknown is only what starts when the Known ends, there’s nothing scary about that. That’s where you can find your creativity. The Known is already the past, don’t live in the past. Be mindfully aware in the present and the future Unknown will be a result of your actions in the Now.
By remaining in the Known, it’s like walking along a path and trying to figure out where to go by facing backwards. Equally, you don’t drive your car by looking out the rear window. You need to turn and face forward, look towards the direction of travel, face the Unknown and then pick a path. That way you create your future, you feel more empowered and life beings to happen FOR you not TO you.
Take small steps out of your imaginary cage, once you start to embrace and thrive in the Unknown you may look back yet you'll see how small that old cage you created was and it starts to look uninviting, you won’t want to go back.
Like that pair of tired old jeans in your wardrobe, you won’t want to go back and try them on because it’s not your style anymore, you’ve grown out of them and you’re occupying a new space.
Open the gate of your imaginary cage, step out into the Unknown and see what exciting things you can manifest.
Love
LP x
