Written by Elise Mullen, Photo courtesy of Sub-Genre Film
“Do you believe everything happens for a reason?” says Charles.
Like leaving your house late because you got to your car and realized you still had your slippers on and had to run back inside and change. Missing the train because a dog ran out in front of your car, stopping you in your tracks. Not getting the job you had your heart set on. A pandemic, canceling travel plans and pushing your last semesters of college online.
Or maybe a breakup. A homebody getting locked out of their apartment, with a work deadline fast approaching. That’s where we meet Charles.
A house is usually a safe place, a constant. Being locked out, especially for Charles, is scary since he doesn’t leave his apartment much at all. Charles had to manage a pressing deadline and find a way back into his apartment despite having no connection with his upstairs neighbors or the outside world.
How do you do it? How do you move forward through the unknown? Sometimes when life doesn’t go how you planned, or how you are used to, it is easy to isolate and surrender your control. Why fight if your usual is out of reach? For Charles, however, his only choice is to get back into his apartment.
Through his journey, he meets the unexpected: neighbors who he’s never fully introduced himself to, a little girl who pokes at the inner child in all of us and even a frequent ticket distributing police officer who just needs a friend. All of these people are around him every day and yet he has never had a conversation with them. It takes being locked out of an apartment to do that sometimes.
For me, being stuck inside my home was the unknown. I was now a thousand miles away from a city I had gotten to know as my usual for the past four years, and now had to figure out how to keep a routine without the normalcy of being able to see family and friends like I used to.
Whatever life throws at you, whatever takes you out of your safe place is intimidating. And it is how we deal with that uncertainty that we learn a lesson. Sure, being frustrated and mad is a part of that journey but staying in that anger likely won’t teach you anything.
Had Charles moped on his front steps, he would have probably never really gotten to know his neighbors or found a way back into his apartment. Had I stayed frustrated at my current circumstance, I would have never been able to reconnect with old friends and experience a kind of joy I haven’t felt for so long.
Ultimately, life isn’t about the start and endpoints. It’s not about getting locked out of an apartment and getting back in. It’s about the journey and what you learn along the way. So, yeah, I do believe everything happens for a reason.
