Boxes everywhere you look!

Boxes inside and outside of you.

We throw it all in a box, walk out to our garage and open the door placing it in a dark corner in the back; we let the box sit there and gather dust, spiders, rat poop and whatever else lurks in a garage.

We do this metaphorically and literally.

What you can’t see won’t hurt you, right?

It got me thinking, how many things do we fit in a box?

Whether they are supposed to go in a box is a whole other question, but sometimes we just don’t know where to put a squirrely emotion, person or feeling.

Maybe we just put the dirty dishes in a box for a little while, til they start to reek and then we begrudgingly take em’ out and scrub, scrub, scrub to remove all the caked on gunk that would have been easily gone had we not dealt with it in the first place.

I believe anything living, except maybe a turtle or a caterpillar probably shouldn’t be in a box, especially anything related to emotions or happiness, relationships and dreams.

Everything with a pulse, which needs to breathe for its very survival, should really never go in a box.

Limitations create the walls and the lid for the box.

Often, we don’t realize this is the position we live our life; we wake each day with our perspective to live in the present with restraints based on the past. The box is the place from where all possibilities, become impossibilities.

A box can show up in our actions, reactions, thoughts, feelings, fears, experiences, how we see and perceive events taking place in our lives. It is based on what we believe is true for our existence and we may not even be aware of its affect in deterring us from our dreams and goals.

Now I should mention the contents of the box also include things we hide or want to deny. If I put it in a box and compartmentalize my life, I don’t have to deal with it! Sounds great, huh?

Life in a box is with our implicit consent; we stay within this familiar “known” space and allow it to act as a threshold to our daily life. It is the restriction of our very soul. 

Sounds like a party in a box? You can always choose to redecorate and find a new place for some of the items below. Let’s bust the lid off some of these boxes!

50 things “off the top of my head” that go in a box:

1. Hats
2. Donuts
3. Heartfelt emotions-about any subject where we are different or threatened.
4. Shoes
5. Caterpillars (waiting for them to become butterflies)
6. Vulnerability
7. Our insecurities
8. Our dreams
9. Pizza
10. Love
11. Fear
12. Leftovers
13. Jewelry
14. Teeth
15. Chocolate
16. Grief
17. You, me and anyone limited by the walls of the box
18. Gloves
19. Maps
20. Anger
21. Abundance
22. Car registration
23. Matches
24. Pasta
25. Pills
26. Fun (Hmmm, sound familiar “I want fun, but something bad could happen!”)
27. Addictions
28. Dead things
29. Crayons
30. Loneliness
31. Freedom
32. Trust
33. Smoked Salmon
34. Cookies
35. Crying
36. Intimacy
37. Laughter
38. Passion
39. Creativity
40. Ashes
41. Contents of my garage
42. Mistakes
43. Fulfillment
44. Pencils
45. Lunch
46. Optimism
47. Celebration
48. True Success
49. Sadness
50. Wine

Please feel free to add on to this list, the possibilities, ahem… are unlimited!

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Editor: Kate Bartolotta