#4 The Outside World

The outside world. The place you are told never to go or bad things will happen. Despite Frollo being the source of your problems, the outside world is the place where the battle takes place. If you haven’t found your Frollo yet, you will start to understand who he is as you venture into this unknown territory. As you try to get out there, you will slowly realize that Frollo was right about a few things. Maybe it feels like the world can be cruel. Maybe it feels like people are wicked. What do you do then? Because a life trapped in a bell tower isn’t a life worth living at all. After all, life isn’t a spectator sport, right? 

Let’s take a step back for a second. What even is the outside world? In short, the outside world is the space that’s beyond your control. Where life ebbs and flows, and everything is new and ever-changing. If life inside the bell tower is safe, secure and controlled, then the world out there is dynamic, unpredictable, and sometimes even a little dangerous. It’s a natural opposite to the bell tower, and it makes returning to it all the sweeter. 

And that’s part of why we need to embrace being out in it for a time. The world and the bell tower balance each other out. Without one, the other corrupts itself. Spend too much hiding inside the bell tower, and you feel like you’re rotting away and not truly living. Spend too much time in the world, and you don’t get a chance to tend to your vulnerabilities. We need to learn to juggle the two in order to live a contented life. 

And as we journey into the world, I think we need to redefine our expectations of it. We often choose to stay in our safe places because they are comfortable. We ask why we would ever love again if not caring hurts a lot less. We would rather scroll through our phones than talk to the person next to us because the phone is more fun. And we are too socially awkward to talk anyway, so why even bother? There’s a big problem here, but it’s not what you think.

The problem is not that we are awkward, unskilled, or even that we crave comfort. The problem is that we expect the outside world to mirror the bell tower. Yes, loving again hurts. Trying to trust after you got burned is stressful. And you aren’t socially awkward, new conversations are simply difficult. But I think if we simply expected the outside world to be less like our beautiful, spacious bell towers, then we might have a better chance at getting somewhere in life.

But this isn’t a call to get out there and hurt, hurt, hurt. We still have our limits. That’s where the bell tower comes in. We need to treat the bell tower as our first priority. It’s an option that we always have available. Then, when we decide that we have had enough time cleaning and ringing the bells, we can branch out into the unknown. But we will go out accepting that the experience may or may not go well. That our best possible outcome isn’t always guaranteed. 

But you know what? That’s ok! Because you have a bell tower to come back to. And though it might be tainted with the scars of your wounded heart, you will still have the space that you truly need to be able to survive. You will have the fortitude to lead a good life, because you will have a place to retreat to. 

So take some time to ask yourself: what am I running from? What’s that thing that I absolutely won’t do? What scares me when I even think about doing it? And are any of those things holding me back from bigger dreams? These things might tell you a little about the outside world that you have been hiding from. I pray you find your outside world, and your bell tower, and that you begin to use them to create a balanced life. 

Until next time

May Peace be your Guide.