Consider the wonder of boxes. Marvelous little (or big) tools they are. Meant to hold something else, they don’t have much purpose if empty. They contain things. So many things. Boxes can be rugged or beautiful, or both. They fly at us continually delivered to our doors.
Big ones are set on pallets for shipping and small ones are set on furniture for admiring. Holding cheap plastic goods made for quick sale but of little value, or holding prized possessions that have warm memories attached.
Boxes can hold human or animal remains, which bring up all our emotions of love, repulsion, sadness and remembered joys. A box with the ashes of loved ones on a shelf in your home is holding a treasure that can’t be duplicated. But it is a treasure your eyes and hands may generally avoid because of the grief and fear attached.
Some craftsmen build beautiful boxes. I know a man who can build a lovely small wooden box without any metal hinges or brackets. That requires skill. Why does he do it? When building such a box he gets in a zone, a pleasurable trance of creation and appreciation of the wood, the process of touch and the expected result. Boxes hold things. His boxes are beautiful while doing it.
Look around you for boxes. A chest of drawers is a box, often on legs, with a particular furniture style. Different ones have many different furniture styles but they are all boxes. Most have drawers, hence the name “chest of drawers.” But some have drawers and doors.
Cabinets like those in a kitchen are just boxes fastened to the wall. Refrigerators are boxes. Rooms in a house are bigger boxes designed to hold furniture and you! Zoom out and your house is just a big fancy box holding rooms, people, cabinets and more boxes. Barns and sheds are boxes. Things holding things.
You have certainly heard of hoarders. Hoarders are folks, who for various reasons put too much in their boxes. They have too many boxes with things that they can no longer use but refuse to discard. Their room boxes have too much resulting that their house boxes have too much resulting often in emotional and physical illness. Boxes are great holding useful and special things of a certain amount, not so much that they overflow.
My wife got a salad at a restaurant a few days ago in a small container like a box. The salad was bright healthy looking veggies packed in tightly. She said it was so tight that she couldn’t stir it up. Each veggie was in its corner, packed in segregated from the others. There either needed to be less content or a bigger box.
It can be good to consider boxes; they are everywhere. And we are containers like boxes ourselves, holding things. Sometimes we hold little to nothing, sometimes we hold just right, often we are holding too much.
Looking at a chest of drawers made me consider the style and function of the chest; which was calming, a kind of mindful meditation. And considering the purposes of boxes in our lives, which hold things. And they are most useful when they hold just the right amount, not too much, not too little.
For a lot of reasons, we lean toward holding too much. We should hold faith, commitment, love, and whatever style we are created to be. And we must let go of what we don’t need, what has lost its usefulness, what someone else can use that we can share, or those items, ideas, and opinions that just need to be thrown into the garbage.
Meditate on this with me. Look around where you are and see the boxes. They are there. Or if you choose and it is safe to do so, close your eyes and imagine a box. Consider the joy of a box that holds useful things for yourself, or for people or creatures that you love. Picture taking out and putting in items in the boxes. Folding and laying an item in a drawer, disassembling something so it fits in a box, closing up a package so it stays fresh. Consider the simple pleasure of boxes that hold things.
Now think of yourself as a box. You are holding a lot, things of value, and other things that got into your life uninvited but never discarded. What are you holding? What comes to mind right away? Look it over, turning this around in your mind, seeing and feeling the edges and costs of holding on. Is it faith, commitment, love, or your genuine style? Or is it worry, ambition, resentment, or someone else’s style? Boxes don’t have much purpose if empty. Choose what you can and should hold onto. Fight for it. But the other things, the ones you don’t really need, should they stay? Once something makes its way into a box, or our life, it can be hard to get it out. Do you want to let go of it? If so, it can make better space for the things you do want, that you do need.
