boxes

We live and die in boxes.

Boxes define, describe, delineate, divide.

If it’s big it’s better. If it’s small it’s expensive. ”Is it sealed in glass? Then it must be admirable, desirable, untouchable.” she says. ”Is it sealed in metal? Then it is impregnable, important, mine.” he says. Sealed is safe. Or do we fool ourselves into security? If it’s in a box it’s named, tagged, owned, understood, controlled. I am in a box. In hair and nail and bone and skin and blood. My mind is in a box - an environment of the brain, of the culture, of the religion, of the science, of the world. Boxes bar and bind and breed. But boxes also bring freedom.

The box of my body allows me to write and move and breathe and laugh and touch and feel. I experience life in this box. I will experience death in this box, soon enough. The box of words allows me to think and speak and sing and compose. The box of religion introduces me to the notion of god. The box of family introduces me to love - for better and for worse. The box of society allows me to survive - even if just barely. There is no innate morality within or without a box. A box is amoral. A box is only a box. I decide what to put into it. I give the box power - i take its power away. I have it taken from me - i have it given to me. Boxes are here to be emptied and filled. To be opened and closed. To be bent and taped and built. To be smashed and folded and thrown away. We are all boxes. We all live in boxes.

We all long to live in a world with no boxes, but isn’t the world itself a box? A box of air and water and earth? A box of gravity and molecule and energy? Of H20 and C02 and acid rain and burning trees. Of thinning sky and cracking earth, of waterfalls and whirlpools.

Encircling. Encapsulating. Enfolding. Engulfing. Enclosing me, you, and all of our boxes.

And isn’t the universe an infinite box - with open lid and unfastened bottom? And isn’t God the eternal box - the mystery, the hope, the unknowable known collector of it all? It’s all in God’s box named,tagged, owned, understood, controlled. Like a children’s toy of endless boxes. Designed to give life and take it away in boxes, in a box, in the box that holds it all. We live and die in boxes. Boxes hold, hide, have this and that and me and you.

We are all in boxes.
We are all boxes.
We all think in boxes.
We all live in boxes.
We all die in boxes.