Respect For Boxes

From the womb, to the tomb, boxes play an integral role in our lives.

I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.

Today, I read a column by bestselling author, radio personality and political historian Thom Hartmann in his publication titled Hunter In A Farmer’s World. In the article “ADHD in the Age of AI: Why the Future May Belong to the Distracted,” he writes "They don’t need to be told to think outside the box because they never lived in one to begin with." I found myself gobsmacked by that singular statement for angular reasons that I will now attempt to elucidate. However poorly.

Boxes

When my youngest baby girl was born she was in the NICU for seven days. She was normal weight and had a full gestation period. However, for reasons I shall not reveal, she was very, very sick.

It was clear from her birth that I would, ultimately, have to raise her alone. Because of her condition, she was totally intubated. There were other children in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) at this very renown and prestigious hospital that were in incubators though she was not; as she was not a “preemie.” Nonetheless, I could see these babies, only hours old, in little acrylic boxes.

I never left her bedside that seven days, with one exception. The chief of staff demanded I go home and rest…and take a shower. Oddly enough that very evening she bounced back like a tiger. I was born in the Year of The Tiger. Make of that what you might.

The phone rang and her assigned nurse, “Pam” (an angel in human form) said to me: “Dad, you wanna come pick up your baby?” I can’t recall ever answering her. But I do know that I moved with a speed and fluidity that would make greased-lightening blush.

I hopped into a different type box with wheels on it.

I took my pride and joy to the box that would be her home. I placed her in a box called a crib. Bathed her in a box called a tub (and purchased many boxes of diapers). As time went by, she would be in another box called preschool. Then many, many more boxes called classrooms.

She would come home from school after exhausting the contents of her lunchbox, study and then get into another box within the box that was her home called a shower. As night fell, she would lie down on a mattress and box-spring. Ultimately, she will see her father, for the last time, in yet another box called a casket.

Because we all have to take that ride.

All Boxed In

The box is not merely a container. It is a condition. A state of being. A frame through which we experience life, often without noticing its edges.

Thom Hartmann’s observation, that some people never lived in a box to begin with, struck me not just as a comment on neurodivergence, but as a challenge to the very premise of social conditioning. What does it mean to live outside the box, when so much of life is structured by them?

We are born into boxes of expectation, identity, and biology. We are sorted into boxes by schools, governments, and algorithms. We are boxed by our gender, our race, our income, our zip code. Even our thoughts are boxed by language, by culture, by fear.

Yet, we rarely question the box. We decorate it. We glorify it. We optimize it. We compete to see whose box is bigger, cleaner, more desirable. We pay for it (including that casket). But seldom do we ask: Who built this box? Why am I in it? And what lies beyond it?

Psychological Boxes

Psychological boxes are the most insidious. They are invisible, internal, and often inherited. Trauma, anxiety, ego, shame — these are not just emotions, but enclosures. They shape how we see the world, how we relate to others, and how we define ourselves.

Mental compartments erected as survival mechanisms. But survival is not the same as freedom; and “freedom” sure as hell ain’t “liberty.” To respect the box is to acknowledge its role in protecting us (or, “US”). It also should humble us to recognize when it begins to limit us (or, “US”)

Political Boxes

Politics is the art of boxing people in. Left vs. right. Us vs. them. Patriot vs. traitor. Democrat vs. Republican. These are not just positions, they are containers for thought, designed to simplify complexity and suppress nuance. We are told to pick a side, to stay in our lane, to vote within the lines. But what if the truth lies between boxes… or outside them entirely?

Respecting political boxes means understanding their function: they organize power, mobilize action, and define collective identity. But it also means resisting their tyranny when they become tools of division rather than instruments of justice. Wake up and smell the coffee, M.F.

The Casket of This Thesis

My daughter, now grown, still lives in boxes. As do I. As do you. But perhaps the goal is not to escape them entirely; that may be impossible. Perhaps the goal is to see them clearly, to choose them wisely, and to step outside them when necessary.

To respect the box is to acknowledge its role in shaping experience. But respect must be paired with critical awareness. Not all boxes are equal. Some protect, others confine. Some are inherited, others constructed malevolently or benevolently. Some must be honored, others must be dismantled, obliterated and destroyed.

The box is not the enemy. The box is the question whether friend, foe, both or neither. And how we answer the question, with reverence, resistance, or reinvention will determine the shape of our lives. Or what is left of them.

The box is not the enemy. It is the frame. But the frame must be questioned.

Lest it become both cage, coffin or both.