Sometimes it seems that life is out to lock us away in a cage….trapped, with nowhere to go. We bounce along day to day doing our best to avoid these cages that roam around cities and towns looking for the next person to catch. How do we end up in a cage? We lose our dreams, we lose our hope…and for awhile we just give up. All of us at one point or another have been trapped in one of these cages, looking at the lock and wondering, “Who has the key to let me out?” until one day over in the corner a shining metallic object catches the sun and lo and behold, there is the key to the lock….it was right there under our noses all along. There are some who will tell us that all of life at some point ends up in one of these cages….maybe so, but the length of time that one remains in the cage is determined by us.

In the movie “Network” a character named Howard Beale hosted a talk show, and one night he looked into the television camera and said “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.” He proceeded to tell all of those who were tuned into his show to get up out of their chairs, open their windows, and yell out that they too were not going to take it anymore. Howard Beale decided that night to break free of the cage that he found himself trapped in. So what are these cages? Some are called bad friendships, bad relationships, unfulfilling jobs. At some point we must ask ourselves how much further can we go by staying in the same situation? The key to letting us out of the cage, funny enough, is inside the cage. The answers, the solutions, to spring open the door lay there right before us….the trick is to see it. The strength to see the key, pick it up, place it in the lock and turn it, overcome the fear and muster up the courage to leave the entrapped quarters. Some of the hardest things to reaffirm in life are Faith, Courage, Love and Conviction….but without them how can we ever leave the cage and never return?

The mysteries of life always seem so complicated, so hard to fathom, when really they’re all so simple. It’s the answers that are hard to accept sometimes. The cages are just a place for us to go when fear backs us into a corner. After awhile the cage can feel safe and comfortable….but in reality the bars of the cage keep us from growing. There’s more life outside then inside the cage.

Turn the key,

Jennifer Avalon
© 1999 Jennifer Avalon