Are We Destined To Be Boxed In?

21 Aug Are We Destined To Be Boxed In?

Growing up is a mixed bag. Case in point: We have more varied and richer experiences but we less frequently free our imaginations to create new experiences with them. There’s what’s real and there’s fantasy—the line between them becomes rigid and “what’s real” comes to dominate our lives. “Oh, that’s not possible. It couldn’t happen. Dogs don’t moo. Numbers don’t dance. Trees don’t talk. There will never be peace. We can’t end poverty. What I do can’t make a difference.”

Instead of our experiences and imaginings continuously playing off each other creating more new experiences and more new imaginings, instead of using what we’ve created to bring into existence new becomings, our imaginings become limited by “what’s real” —which means we wind up thinking small. We think so small that little changes are hailed as “revolutionary”—when what they produce is, at best, a slight reform of a system. We think so small that everyone from business leaders and social change agents to car buyers are urged to “think outside the box.”“Thinking outside the box” isn’t enough. Because the box is still there—it’s what you want to get out of, and that desire to escape overdetermines how you imagine.

We need to give up the box completely. We need to “think without a box.”

But we can’t. Not completely anyway. But that’s OK. Because developing ourselves and our world doesn’t depend on whether we actually can think without a box. It hinges on whether we can imagine that we can.

Next time you have a new experience (no matter how mundane), let your imagination play with it as if there is no line between reality and fantasy, as if there is no box.