'The box of impossible things' is my most current piece of writing and has been born out of my anger about fitting people, particularly young people and children, into boxes. It annoyed me tremendously just how much the primal need of children to belong is being abused. This human needs makes them (us) like a sponge for all the 'Do's and Dont's' passed on with often the best of intentions; the intention of fitting in. Yet, how often do we look into a person with open eyes to look what they might bring?
Funnily, as the story is taking shape I am welcomed this morning by a song, a beautiful cover version of a tune I shouted along to as a teen - Creep by Radiohead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFkzRNyygfk ... it evokes all the feelings of not fitting into the little mountain setting I grew up in. Stunning and magical as it might have been the boundaries of what is acceptable behaviour and what kind of thinking is the right kind are rather narrow. Apparently this can be explained by the narrow valleys enclosed by ridged mountain ranges. Oh well.
I recently learnt that even in my most desperate attempts to act and behave 'normal' I was noticed to be ... 'quirky' ... a loving way of saying 'different' I guess. With this revelation that I simply won't ever manage to 'fit in' I rather came to enjoy the company of others who equally push boundaries. So I began to unpack my 'box of impossible things' and went on a quest of finding out how we end up with an array of convictions about ourselves that ultimately make us a shadow of our true potential self.
It starts with a desire to be 'loveable', worthy of your family's love.
I overheard a mum telling her sons "Nobody likes boys who..."
It saddens me that we are made to think that we have to 'work' in order to be deserving of love. How dare we decide at the onset of a young life to impose our criteria of what makes a person loveable onto a perfect little being? But what is most excruciating is knowing that we actually mean well in doing so. We desire an easy life for them - a successful life (according to social norms)... a life full of love and positive things.
We don't want it to be hard for others to love our offspring.
This young female author has captured her pain with fitting the bill of being 'loveable' in this quotation:
"You are terrifying and strange and beautiful, someone not everyone knows how to love.” Warsan Shire
In prescribing what a person ought to be like in order to be deserving of love we ask our children to disregard aspects of who they are and most importantly their feelings, which can act as signposts through life if we learn how to read them. These parts are put into a box and are hidden away, leaving an emptiness, a person who might fit in, a person who belongs but at a huge cost.
Instead I wonder if we could ask what that particular soul can bring to us and help them reveal who they are and what gifts they carry.
And when we struggle to love their uniqueness because it challenges us can we be responsible enough to look inwards, finding what parts in us are responding to who they are, that we ought to deal with?
'The box of impossible things' is a story that attempts to address these questions. Escorted by a sweet picture of a toddler who recently very adamantly said 'No!' to me as I asked her if she could show me how sisters behave nicely I accept her sentence 'You can't say this'. It reminds me just how conditioned we all are and how much the story is only aimed to be a seed to encourage more little girls and boys like this one.
After all, who am I to say that their game, which was annoying for me to watch, was not 'nice' for them.
Your misfit par excellence
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