If you're social media savvy, you've most likely come across a meme about the new Netflix movie "Bird Box." If you found it intriguing, you may have watched the movie or read one of the MANY theories behind it. Well, like most of you, I also caved and watched it for myself. Oddly enough, I wasn't disappointed. In fact, it made me think. If nothing else, I was looking for the signs, the theories and the hidden messages and that meant I was fully engaged in the film. It was a nice change to feel really connected to something on television other than, well, Daniel The Tiger.
​​ I found that when I was watching the movie, I was often reminded of the struggles of parenting. Now, stay with me. Take a look at the picture above. This is Malorie and her children making their escape to what they assume is freedom with nothing more than a glimmer of hope. The struggle to get those two children into the boat was half of the battle. To me, this feels a lot like those families struggling with infertility and miscarriage. For some of us, becoming a parent IS half the battle. You spend so much of your time blind folded, keeping secrets, afraid to be happy, afraid to love or feel, that you actually forget how to do it when it happens for you. For others, becoming a parent wasn't as challenging, but we can all agree that being a parent, is one of the most difficult experiences of our lives. That river they traveled down is a lot like parenting. None of us really know what we are doing. In fact, we aren't even sure what the destination is. What we do know, is that we want more than anything to keep our children safe. We want them to have a better life than we did. And often that means risking it all. Could Bird Box be suggesting that we could not only be powerless to the demons of the world, but purposefully blind to them? Sometimes we close our eyes to the judgement of other moms and sometimes we keep our head down to pretend that the evils of the world can't hurt us. Racism, poverty, illness, addiction, mental health; these things can't harm us unless we look it dead in the face...right? So in order to keep our innocent children safe from these cruel realities, we tell them to keep their head down, work hard and don't look back until one day they reach the safety of what we deem to be success.
Maybe the ones that chose to look aren't so bad after all?
Did you pick up on any hidden messages? I'd love to hear about them!