If we imagine our being as a room of any size, it seems that most of us know only a single corner of that room, a spot by the window, a narrow strip on which we keep walking back and forth. That gives a kind of security. But isn’t insecurity with all its dangers so much more human?

We are not prisoners of that room.

— Rilke, Borgeby gard, Sweden, August 12, 1904
Letters to a Young Poet