The Cage

My worst fear of all time is being restrained. Someone locking me up in a cage and leaving to rot all by myself in a tiny little cage with no purpose in life but to sit and wait for my death. Nothing else scares me more. I would rather die a million deaths than have that happen to me.

And yet, there are cages everywhere in my life. A cage of fear, fear that holds me back from saying something that needs to be said, fear that holds me back from expressing my "fullest me", fear that just puts me into this little mold of what I should be but never what I could be if I opened up the door of my cage.

There's also a cage of solitude. One that traps you in front of the television, in front of your video games, in front of the computer, in front of your telephone, your music player, etc., etc. You're trapped in a virtual world. Virtual meaning "NOT REAL." When your conversations start revolving around a world or a person that does not exist, you know that you're in a cage of solitude. Where did the rest of humanity go? When did we decide that the only way to entertain ourselves was to pick up our computers and go on facebook, or to pick up a controller and watch the O.C. or cartoons or the latest movie? When did our lives get so completely and utterly boring that we don't even talk to the people in the same room as us? Instead, we just watch others live another life and think that it's the greatest thing since cheese. I. HATE. IT. I want to break those chains more than anything. In fact, I have an urge to pick up a baseball bat and just start smashing the television in my living room at this very moment... but I will restrain myself.

the very world around me is a cage. The media is censored to tell me what it wants me to know, the schools and universities are censored to tell me what they want me to know, video games are censored to portray what they think they want me to know, books even portray what they want me to know. I do not hear about the things that my government or the big corporations don't want me to hear about. I do not hear about the life of the murderer. I do not hear about the lack of power a citizen really holds in this government we call a democracy. I do not hear about the lives of child soldiers in the Democratic Republic. So here I am. A product of the knowledge that has been predestined for me to know. Is there anything that I have truly figured out for myself? No. Not really. I am trapped at this very moment in a cage of predestined knowledge. For creativity is something very rare. And those who possess it are diamonds in the rough. Do I have the power to question, to think, to create? I don't know.

In many ways, the bars of my cage are a little more flexible because of the truth God's been able to show me through Jesus Christ. The truth and grace and love He brings me is the only truth that I have any sound belief in. As crazy as that might sound. Cause in every piece of nature, in every person, in every creative work, I see a glimpse of a creator. The divine artist. And Jesus, who's life displayed the greatest kind of truth and love that I've ever seen, claimed to be God, and so i believe. I believe the man who's life was not caged. And who was killed for it.