Room to Move
Huh, what’s this? Caged, trapped, stuck? I want out, now!
As adults we can spend time and energy thinking about what are our passions, our talents, and our yearnings. What we should be doing with our lives, and yet where is the room to move?
It’s like we are trapped in something like the playpen of yesteryear and can not get out. We want to leave. We shake the rails. We cry, we scream. We wait and wait. And nothing changes for a long time….
It might be our physical or mental health, our job, our school, our community group, our family, our marriage, and for women, even our body shape, but we don’t feel the freedom to be ourselves.
As a young Mum I remember some advice recommending the use of a playpen for young children. I thought they were old fashioned. It was contrary to my thoughts that playpens were indeed a tool which creates creativity rather than cramp it. Despite my unbelief, I became a playpen advocate.
.
room to move??
As a Strengths Coach it is easy to understand people want to change their circumstances, to enable them to become more like they are supposed to be….
But what if our greatest accomplishments come when we feel like we are trapped or cornered, like we have almost drawn our last breathe? Because it is then that the strength that is within each of us rises up.
To become more of who we were born to be, in that place, in that context, in that small confined little area…
Nelson Mandela did not have a background like most politicians, jailed for 27 years, 18 of those on Robbin Island often locked in a small cell.
It has been witnessed that he extraordinarily united a group of prisoners and they began to study together and focus also in their own individual areas of expertise making decisions as a group to see the way forward.
Mandela said in a speech in 1990 “We need to unite the people of our country as it is an important a task now as it always has been. ”
So trapped in a cell , Mandela took the opportunity to connect those around him in unity.
Is that not what he did as President of the New South Africa, encouraging the nation to unite together…?? Did he leverage who he was to make a positive change in the world around him? Did he give others room to move?
So how do we make our own room to move where we are?
How can we give others room to move?
Knowing your own passions, talents and gifts and learning how to leverage them where you are is the room to move.