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Take a good look around you. I’ll bet you that most of everything you see either came from a box, or IS in a box. In my case, as I sit here typing this blog, I see my PC (which came from a box), using an external keyboard (also from a box), drinking the remaining Coke from a 1.5L bottle (six bottles in every Coke box). Off to the far side of the room are the shoe racks (were in a box when I bought them), shoes (some of which are still in their boxes), an electric fan (came with a box), etc, etc, etc…
The grocery store is full of products that are in boxes too, even those that don’t need to be in a box. Take milk for example, they could’ve done away with the box and could’ve printed on the foil instead but no.. they had to put them in a box. Some are in cans, you might argue. Then again, how do they transport these cans?
Yup! In boxes!
Truth is, there exists an unbreakable bond between people and boxes. We can’t get enough of them! We use them to maximize storage capacity, we use them to optimize filing and organization, we use them to protect fragile items, and sometimes, we just love to collect them and use them as repositories of tidbits and doodads.
We love boxes so much that we even oftentimes use imaginary ones to file, organize, and categorize the people we come in contact in our everyday lives. Take the skinny kid with the glasses way back in grade school for example – box label: NERD. What about the guy with the soft voice and sweet smelling perfume – box label: HOMO. I had my own box when I was in high school. Back then, the box said “intelligent but lazy”. When I got to college, the box became “just lazy”.
Sometimes we struggle to free ourselves from the boxes society has given us in turn. Sometimes the change just come naturally – like the laid-back funny friend in high school who became one of the most effective leaders in college, the childish schoolmate who became one of the newest officers of the Philippine army, the shy foreign guy who found his voice and subsequently the love of his life or the brod who found his success despite all the drawbacks in his life. I once struggled to free myself from the “class clown” box that I found myself in, only to realize later that I was quite comfortable in it.
Sometimes, the boxes shape our lives without us even becoming aware of it. Like the girl who graduated summa cum laude because everyone believed in her, the guy who became a bum because everyone expected nothing more, the rich guy who just had to marry someone from his own social class, or the gay who just had to have some man-boobs because girls have it (most of them anyway). Point of this is the fact that sometimes this is a good thing, sometimes not. Sometimes we end up feeling frustrated and dissatisfied with ourselves all because we weren’t able to live up to the box other people gave us. It’s like being boxed as a microwave oven and ending up a toaster.
Sometimes we forget that there are people inside all these boxes. Persons capable of shedding them, capable of choosing their own boxes, or simply capable of change. Convicts are not all bad, priests are not always perfect, blonds are not always dumb, politicians are not always corrupt and believe it or not, I bet there are still some guys who are not out for sex. It’s not the box but what’s in it that really matters.
Don’t get too fixated by the boxes you see all around you or the box you find yourself in. Hey, sooner or later, all of us are going to be in one anyways, one that’s six feet under. He he he
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