A Big Bold Beautiful Journey

By Prerna Chandra ·

The first time I got stuck in an elevator, I thought I was going to die.

I was nine. The lights went out. The air felt heavier than it was. My chest tightened. My tiny palms pressed against those metal doors like they could open on willpower alone.

Two minutes. That’s all it was. But to me, it stretched into eternity. Since then, I avoid elevators. I’ll climb ten flights of stairs, let my legs ache, just to feel the freedom of air around me.

I’ve told myself it’s just preference. But the truth is: I’ve been loyal to a fear that no longer serves me. That elevator didn’t trap me all these years my memory did.

And isn’t that what life does to us? We let one burn, one heartbreak, one failure dictate every chapter after. We start living in prisons built by our past selves.

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” — Anaïs Nin

And for years, I was the girl still stuck in the elevator.

When the Universe Decides You’ve Had Enough

But the universe has a trickster streak. It doesn’t let you play small forever. It cracks your walls open in ways you can’t ignore. A stranger who feels oddly familiar. An opportunity you’re terrified to take. A moment so ordinary, yet it rearranges your entire existence.

For me, it was love.

After heartbreak, I promised myself never again. Independence was my armor, solitude my safe space. And then he arrived quietly, gently, without drama. He was patient, kind, nothing like the storms I’d weathered before.

But instead of leaning in, I pushed away. My old beliefs whispered, love equals pain. So I scanned for red flags that weren’t there. I sabotaged. I nearly lost something that was never meant to hurt me.

And here’s the thing: the universe wasn’t punishing me. It was offering me a second chance. A chance to learn what love could look like without fear.

“The past is a place of reference, not a place of residence.”

But I had been living there for years, fully furnished, rent paid in self-doubt. This love cracked the door open. All I had to do was step through.

Clinging to Ghosts of Past

We all carry our “elevators” places, memories, or wounds we swore we’d never repeat. And so we cling to our rules, convinced they’ll protect us:

But rules built on fear are still cages. And cages, no matter how familiar, were never meant to be lived in.

“Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go.” — Hermann Hesse

I thought I was protecting myself by avoiding pain. But I was really protecting myself from joy.

“Fear doesn’t protect us from pain. It protects us from growth.”

The Leap of Faith

Letting go feels like madness. Like standing on the edge of a cliff and stepping into nothing.

Sometimes you don’t know if you can fly until you leap. That leap the one that terrifies you is often the beginning of the big, bold, beautiful journey you were meant to live.

Like a trapeze artist suspended midair, I had to release one bar before the other could reach me. That moment of free fall the nothingness is where faith is born.

And the strange, miraculous thing? The ground didn’t disappear. The universe caught me. In his patience, in my courage, in the discovery that maybe, just maybe, I was stronger than the fear I’d rehearsed for years.

That was the beginning not of love, but of something bigger. That’s where life begins again.

The Journey Itself


The elevator taught me that the walls don’t shrink. We do, when we refuse to stretch.

Every time I chose safety, I chose smallness. But every time I took the leap -whether in love, in work, or in my own inner battles, I discovered that the space outside the cage wasn’t terrifying at all. It was vast, alive, and filled with light.

Life had never been about avoiding the fall. It was about trusting the flight.

The Love You Owe Yourself

We spend years terrified of being abandoned by lovers, by friends, by opportunities. But here’s the truth I wish someone had whispered to me earlier:

“No one can abandon you if you choose not to abandon yourself.”

That’s the love story we forget to write. The one where you show up for yourself, again and again, even when others don’t.

The universe may bring you second chances, unexpected loves, new beginnings but unless you choose yourself first, you’ll keep missing them.

So, what’s your elevator?

What fear, what story, what memory are you still loyal to, even though it’s been starving you more than saving you?

Because the universe will always crack the door open.It will send you people, moments, miracles in disguise.
But you’ll never step into your big bold beautiful journey unless you loosen your grip on the past.

Maybe today, the real leap of faith isn’t about romance, or career, or destiny.

Maybe it’s about this:

Will you stop abandoning yourself and finally take that big, bold, beautiful journey beyond fear?