Thinking outside the boxes

How I'm thinking about limitation these days

Photo by Erda Estremera on Unsplash

As I was talking with a friend the other day, a subject came up that I’ve been ruminating on for quite a while now, and so for me, it feels very normal. Less so for my friend, who was keen to hear more of my thoughts on the subject {bless her}, and asked if I was going to write a Substack essay about it. Rude not to, in that case.

For a little context, throughout my whole life I’ve struggled to fit the mould. Only, I didn’t know that was what was happening for a really long time, because I was very busy being the good girl. It was killing me, but I thought that was a defect in me, not a problem with the systems, beliefs, expectations, and cultural whatevers to which I was desperately trying to conform.

These days, I think of these systems, beliefs, expectations, and cultural whatevers, as boxes.

It’s a pretty basic metaphor, but the more I think into it {and outside it!}, the more it has to offer.

So my Basic Box Theory™ is that we are handed many boxes pretty much as soon as we arrive in the world, and for many of us, the purpose seems to be to try to fit into all of them. Even if it’s uncomfortable. Even if it’s very painful indeed. Even if it means waking up decades later and realising you’ve been living someone else’s idea of a life.

If you think about it, a box is a tidying device. If you put things in a box you:

• know where they are

• can put them away out of sight and not think about them {you might even forget you have the box}

• have some level of control over the contents of the box, or even the box itself

• can potentially use the box to define its contents

A box is a convenient way to separate, organise, and control. How many boxes can you think of right off the bat?

I don’t believe anyone likes boxes at their core, but there are people - or parts of people - that like certain boxes because they feel safe within them. In a world like this one, that seems fair. And I don’t believe that everyone is here to get out of any or all of the boxes, or that everyone would agree on what those boxes even are. We’re all here for different reasons. I do think that in the absence of vacating all possible boxes, a consciously chosen box is healthier for a person than an unconsciously chosen one, or one you’ve been forced into. If you’re going to get in a box, at least choose one that fits; preferably one with some room to move around and grow. And maybe you’ll find after a while it doesn’t fit so well any more, and you can choose a different, bigger, more flexible, transparent - or whatever useful qualities it might have - box. Like a hermit crab. I saw a video showing how when hermit crabs outgrow their shells, they line up on the sand and swap with the next size up. Adorable. And very practical. But they still need a shell.

So this is all quite abstract, and I personally like tangible examples, so let’s look at three of the boxes I’ve been thinking about, the limits of which I’ve been testing and that I’ve been actually starting to climb out of - if only partly - in recent years. It’s not always a quick ‘ok I’m out’; sometimes it takes years to work out

a} that you’re in a box,
b} that you don’t like it, and
c{ how on earth to get out.

The one that’s most present for me currently is the Age box, so I’ll talk about that first.

Age

Last year I decided to finally give myself permission to own the fact that I have no interest in talking about age {mine, mainly, but also age generally}, and actually haven’t been for a long time. Age is one of the biggest boxes there is. The second I tell you my age {and let’s put aside for a moment the fact that the Gregorian calendar is just one way to count time, and everyone agreeing on it doesn’t make it the Ultimate Truth} - you’re going to put me in a box, full of assumptions. Probably unconsciously, and almost certainly without intending any kind of negative impact, but I feel it. I don’t like that box. It doesn’t even matter whether any assumptions you may make are positive or negative.

And this isn’t just about fears around getting older, although I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have any of those. Of course I do - because I’ve spent my whole life in boxes in a culture that does not respect or embrace aging, and the age box is full of fears, culturally speaking. I’m working on those.

What this is more about for me though, is the limitations that age, or rather the perceptions of age - any age - create. My relationship to limitation has changed dramatically through my life, and in particular in the last few years. I find I have less and less capacity to tolerate it, especially when it’s ‘given’ to me. Someone asked me earlier this year how old I am, and I didn’t want to say, but I didn’t yet have the language to handle it gracefully, and was still tangled in some people pleasing behaviours around answering the question you’re asked, the very second you’re asked it. {And I haven’t entirely got past that yet. Writing about it is part of my process.} So I told them, and they said - as I knew they would, because I’ve heard it all my life - you don’t look it. Which on the face of it you might think is a nice thing to say, and it’s certainly always meant as a compliment, as it was in this case. But for me, whatever your response - right down to the fact that you have one - it feels like a box. And like all boxes, once you’re in, there’s nowhere interesting to go. Walls on all sides.

To me, it’s neither of interest nor import whether or not someone ‘looks their age’ - and what does that even mean? Especially at this point in history, with all the ‘medical assistance’ available to prevent the appearance of aging, and the increase in the human life span? It’s still common practice for women to be damned in the media when it comes to their age - whether they’re trying to look younger, or ‘letting themselves go’ by ‘showing their age’. Or whatever other inanity they come up with. There’s no winning there.

I’m aware this is starting to sound like a rant punctuated by inverted commas, and it actually isn’t. I’m not getting ON a box about this, lol. What I actually have is a total lack of interest in that particular conversation. I couldn’t care less how old anyone is; what I’m interested in is who you are, and especially who you are when you get out of all those boxes. And I’d really like it if you were more interested in who I am underneath, than in how many alleged years I’ve been on this planet.

Because now we can have a real conversation, being to being.

I will say, as with any concept or definition, if an individual finds it supportive or empowering, or they just actually like that particular box - that’s different. I’m not talking about that. I am of course still in multiple boxes, and there’s an argument to be made that if one existed in no boxes, one might actually not be here at all. I’m talking about my own experience of boxes, how I see and experience them, and what I’m shifting to be more box free. Zero judgement on anyone else’s choices. {Although if reading this gets you thinking, I won’t mind. :)}

Name

Oh man. This has been a sticky one my entire life.

A name is a box, and this isn’t about whether or not I like my name. I don’t have any particular feelings about it, and that’s rather the point. I’ve never identified with my name. I don’t enjoy when people use it, and especially if they use it multiple times in a short conversation. I almost never use other people’s names, unless I need to get their attention, and if you’re someone I know well, you almost certainly have at least one nickname I use instead. {Poppy - my doggo - has about 900 of them. I only call her Poppy around other people, so they know who I’m talking about. And because some of her names are very silly, and I don’t always feel like getting into it.}

I intentionally don’t use the auto insert of people’s names in my email newsletters, because I don’t like it when I receive what I know is a mass email with my name in it - and especially if it’s ‘inserted’ multiple times throughout the email. I know the common wisdom is that using someone’s name makes it more personal. For me, it feels intrusive and fake; it isn’t a personal conversation just because it’s been personalised, and maybe I’m just not willing to suspend my disbelief enough to not feel the dissonance of it! I realise that’s never the intention, and if you want to use my name I won’t think less of you - sometimes what’s easiest is, well, easiest.

I’m not going to change my name either. What would be the point of creating another box of exactly the same kind? And there’d be way too much admin, sorting that out. If I could go without, I would, but that could be awkward. {Remember all the hoo-ha when Prince renamed himself as a symbol? I like to think he was playing with boxes too.} When I think of myself though, there’s no name attached, just like there’s no job title or family member assignation, no roles or identities. I am fluid and edgeless; a name - to me - is a container, and a container is, by its nature, limited.

Identity

Early on in my business, I wrote a blog post about how I don’t see myself as an artist. It was a bit deliberately provocative, because of course that’s how I describe myself, and I do very much appear to be an artist. It’s the same premise as names; identity words about me are - for me - signposts for other people, so they can decide if they want to work with me or not, or to think whatever they want to think about me. {My parents like to think of me as their daughter, for example.} They’re not for me. I’m not interested in them. I don’t even relate to most of them, even the ones that are ‘true’, like artist, or daughter. To me, they don’t say anything about the true nature of how I ‘be’ in relationship to the thing or the person they connect me with.

And it bears repeating that I am not saying that if someone loves a particular title to describe themselves, or they find certain words empowering or uplifting or supportive in any way, they shouldn’t use them. The entire point is freedom. If it makes you feel free, I’d say it’s a good shout, but that’s between you and you, and not my business. {I am rooting for your freedom though.}

The point of the blog post was that when I’m in the studio, I’m not thinking about being an artist. Ideally, I’m not thinking about anything - I’m in the process, which is edgeless and fluid and where I feel most me, because ‘I’ am no longer there. I love being gone, not in a nihilistic way, but in the sense that I feel most at home in the beyond. I suspect we all do at some level, but I also believe we’re all here for different purposes. And I personally know people who not only wouldn’t agree with what I’m talking about here; they simply wouldn’t have a frame of reference for it.

Box wisdom from the Toltecs

I’ve been seeing a craniosacral therapist for a few years, and she also happens to be a Toltec practitioner of three decades, which has led to some very interesting conversations. {See Carlos Castaneda and his books about working with Don Juan.} Apologies to the Toltecs for any butchering I may do here, but as I understand it, in the Toltec tradition, which is over 1000 years old, there is the Tonal {pronounced Tonal} - the limited physical world - and the Nagual {pronounced Nawahl}, which is the infinitude of all that is unseen by the eye. {The quantum particle and wave I talked about in my last essay.} We all have access to - and indeed are - both. As humans living day to day lives, our attention is most often in the Tonal - inside the box. I guess you might define it as, only what my eyes can see is real. The Toltec phrase for your point of awareness - where your attention is focused - is the Assemblage Point, and the key thing about that is that you can move it, from the Tonal to the Nagual, and back again. From ‘this is all there is’, to ‘anything is possible and exists in potential’. The Nagual is edgeless.

That’s what I’m interested in, and the more I learn about it, the more I understand why I can no longer tolerate so many of the boxes of the Tonal {which is in itself a box}. There are many practices for moving your Assemblage Point, both within the Toltec tradition and others. You can do it through meditation, energy practices, really anything that shifts you out of limited perception into expansiveness. Sometimes I think I’d like to live full time in the Nagual, but then I’d no longer need a body, and I have some stuff still to do here.

When I write, I’m always thinking about the ‘yes buts’. Where might what I’m saying not make sense? Who might not see it this way and what objections might they have? Not so I can convince, or even to prevent troll-like comments, but so I can do my best to both create a rounded conversation, and to further clarify the ideas I’m exploring for myself.

One thing that came to me, while brushing my teeth during the writing of this essay, was that if people want to put me in boxes, either for their own convenience or indeed their sanity, that’s fine. They’re going to do it anyway. Box away, friends. But when it comes to my relationship with myself and with life, it’s about exploring the possibilities for freedom, depth, and integrity of experience, as far as that’s possible in a human life. If you’re insisting I exist only in a certain box for you, ok - but it may mean we can’t truly connect. And that’s ok too - not every connection has to be deep and meaningful - but my interest in life is in what becomes possible outside the limitations we’re given {and those we choose}. So, the less boxes I encounter, the freer and more myself I get to be.

And I can’t help thinking, if everyone was even a little more ‘unboxed’ - what kind of world might we live in then?