What Is The Box?

The Box to me is anything anyone follows blindly without question.

For example: I was in public school through fifth grade. Public school was a Box for me and my parents. It was never questioned; I was of school age so I went to school. That's just what happens. Right?

Why? Was I learning things in school that I couldn't learn at home?

Hm... Probably not anything good that my parents wanted me to learn.

The summer between fifth and sixth grade The Box was questioned. My mother jumped out of The Box with my father, my two brothers, and me in tow. But our journey wasn't through. We weren't in public school, yet we were recreating it at home.

Why?

Did we need tests and grades to prove we were learning to a "teacher" that already knew what we knew because we learned it together or had a conversation about it. Did we need a lunch hour? Snack time? Recess? An hour for math? What if we grasped the concept in ten minutes? Or what if we wanted to dig really deep into it? Could we keep going while we were on a roll? Or did we have to stop and move on to something else, hoping the passion would still be there tomorrow?

It didn't take long for us to leap completely out of the public school at home box we had put ourselves in. We soon discovered how to learn again. Maybe more importantly we learned to love learning again.

Anything can be a Box, not just public school. There have been many Boxes in my life - religion, schooling, jobs, love, marriage - just to name a few. There have been Boxes I questioned and leapt out of. There have been Boxes I questioned and not leapt from, but in the questioning they became something different.

Everyone has Boxes whether they admit it or not. Everyone's Boxes are different. Not everyone will find the same answers when they question them. I questioned Christianity and left it, others questioned and kept it. We are all different people, with different Boxes, different questions, and different answers. The only truly important thing is that we recognize the Boxes in our lives and question them. That is life beyond the box.