Random Thoughts on Boxes...and Mayhem

 By Marilyn Moore

Savanna liked being in a box.

A collection of boxes...some hold treasures, others are treasures as they are.  One plays music.

Boxes aren't always four-sided.  Some don't have sides at all, at least, not in the way "side" is defined in geometry.  This box, which looks like a hat box, actually held a lovely tea set.  You have to look inside the box to see what's there.

When you google "outside the box," you get 1.85 billion responses in 0.72 seconds.

There are seventeen pages of quotes about boxes on BrainyQuotes.  The first page has 13 quotes from women and 47 quotes from men.  Do men think/write/talk about boxes more than women? Or are they perhaps more frequently quoted?  In those quotes, "box" sometimes refers to the sport of boxing, or to a cereal box.

My favorite of the quotes:  "I like to say it's an attitude of not just thinking outside the box, but not even seeing the box." Safra A Catz

Sometimes a person is trapped inside a box by what's outside the box...it may look, or feel, like mayhem.  But sometimes, instead of feeling trapped in the box, it may feel safe.  When that happens, the box's name is probably something like "home," or "friendship," or "love."

Sometimes the mayhem is inside the box...and it smothers....

Sometimes, people place those they see as "Other" inside a box, restraining the other's personal liberties and humanity in some way.  It's hardly ever good for the other. (Perhaps I'm thinking of legislation proposed, and likely to be passed, by Nebraska state senators this year.)

"Sandy in Defined Space."  I wonder if Sandy feels protected by boundaries and firm edges, or confined by boundaries and firm edges.  While in a defined space, she's also exposed to the elements and swirling mayhem around her.  I wonder if that feels scary, or if she's glad to feel the openness.

"Floating Figure."  No box here.  No name given, but definitely female.  I wonder if she feels free, open to all that surrounds her, or if she wishes for protection....

What happens to a brain in a box?  And it is more stifling to have your brain in a box than to have your body in a box?

"Brain in a box" and "aging" presents a conundrum.  The older one is, the more neural pathways have been created by experiences, so the more ways the brain has to learn something new.  Unless...the neural pathways have hardened, like clay that has been fired, and there's no room to expand for a new idea.

What if you turn the box, or more than one box, on its edge, and use it as a foundation....

In the physical, geographical, geological world, I'm an out of the box person.  Literally.  I'm a child, daughter, and, now, elder of the prairie.  My soul thrives and is sustained by wide open skies and an endless horizon.

"In the box," geographically and geologically, is frightening.  My stomach clenches at being in small spaces, my heart beat quickens, and terror is close to the surface.  Especially in spaces that are under--under ground, under water, under a glacier.  Deep inside the glacier, under 35 meters of ice, is the most "out of the box" thing I could do, because it put me in a box.  Worse still would be deep sea diving...which I think I will never do.

Savanna liked getting out of her box and stretching out in the sunshine.  She was good at knowing where she needed to be and putting herself exactly there.  She had a keen sense of self-awareness.  That's a gift.  And a metaphor, I think....

Sometimes metaphors work, sometimes they don't.  The same may be true of this blog.

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