The Box

The world was such a happy place, full of secrets when I was younger or, for that matter, when I started writing. I wrote about anything and everything I knew and felt- from my first crush to what I had for lunch to how hot it was that day. I used to wait impatiently to jot down about my day to my diary. It was my happy place for a very long time; the only place where I could say whatever I wanted to without fear of somebody questioning my thoughts, correcting them for me or, telling me to confine them to "The Box".
I have decided to focus on the Box today. This Box is not dreary and plain like a cardboard box. It is vibrant, mobile and has been around for as long as civilization has been. In common terms, it is referred to as "social norms", "societal values" or "traditions". Depending on what continent God Decided for you to be born in, the Box welcomed you and ensured as best as possible that you never got out of it.
The Box presented us all with some tutorials as part of our upbringing e.g. the color pink is for girls, wrestling for boys, cooking and cleaning is a disgrace for men, disagreeing with one's parents is wrong, marrying young is better for everyone, enduring injustice is women's fate- they should just suck it up and deal with it, and, cheating should be forgiven and forgotten sometimes for "the children's sake", and sometimes for the woman's own well-being.


Of course, not all of these tutorials were hard or debatable but since the Box exposed us to those previously living in it, they made sure our thoughts wouldn't wander off, our clouds of dreams dare not escape the Box's premises because God Knows, outside the Box lay possibilities! The horrid and unconventional possibilities of creativity, novelty and happiness from means OTHER than the Box established and conformed with.


Needless to mention, I always disliked the Box to begin with. Maybe because of the very education I received, authentic and Box-certified and for the most part stifling, or maybe because I was always too stubborn and cold-hearted to disregard what the Box taught me. I also hated to wear the official Box attire: fakeness. Wearing fake smiles around fake Box-ers was one thing that made me anti-Box at a very early age. Also, vibrance never caught my attention. It was always plain and simple things that I found comfort in and enjoyed, like an old, dusty, second-hand book or just plain old paper and pen.


Now here I am, 22 years old (yes, Box, I'm not ashamed to reveal my age, it only shows how long have I survived in you and I am proud of it!), yet still searching for the exit. I mean, there's so much in the Box, it had to make its way in from somewhere and that has to be the very way OUT too.


My brain is the work of God, one of more than 6 billion that walk the Earth today, my hand has the power to write and my heart has so much to do when I neglect the Box and its faithful inhabitants.


Writing is one such thing and the day I forget to to write, I might as well declare myself a proud and happy "Box-er".