Thank Goodness It's Monday #443

HOW TO BREAK OUT OF THE BOX

 

I recently bought a major piece of equipment that came – disassembled – in a box that just barely squeezed into the vehicle I borrowed to transport it.

 

Although I’m tempted, I’m not going to recount the personal “lessons learned” from the purchase, loading, transportation, unloading, and assembly process. (It would be more like griping than finding some good universal TGIM Takeaways.) 

So let’s fast forward to the end of that part of the process and recognize –

The Great Big Empty Box

 

The 10-or-so pounds of recyclable industrial-strength cardboard I was left with brought to mind a recollection penned years ago by a friend and fellow writer/editor, Diane Cody. I remembered the item warmly and, upon rereading it for the first time in over a decade, found it was as touching and motivational as I recalled.

So, without further ado, I’m going to share the original with you now. Then let’s explore the 2014 TGIM Takeaway possibilities:

 

Here’s Diane’s original piece.

*****

When I was a kid, any neighbor who bought a new appliance became a hero for a day. Why? Because the great big empty box that appeared at the curb after the appliance was installed meant PARTY TIME!

 

Like a magnet, that box would attract kids from all over the neighborhood. We’d drag it onto someone’s lawn and pile in as many kids as the box would hold. Then we’d tip it over, spin it around, jump on top of it, or make a fort out of it.

Soon the closed end would open up, and then the real fun started. The box became a tank-like vehicle that mowed down anything in its path when powered by two kids crawling on their hands and knees. Forward we’d go, rolling over lawn, bushes, other kids, tumbling, crashing, laughing.

 

Eventually the box would tear, and we’d drag the flat pieces of cardboard back to the curb of the original owner. The fun was over for the day, but for days afterward whoever had participated in the “box day” felt a camaraderie; a closeness. We would just look at each other and giggle; no one had to say a word to start it off. The whole group would walk down the street together, in step, in harmony, as one.

 

Now I’m grown up with a home of my own. I recently purchased a new appliance. The great big empty box sits in my garage waiting to be recycled. Every morning on my way out the door, I pass the box. I pause to look at it, remembering, and I smile.

 

I’m tempted to transport the box to the office, invite my coworkers to hop inside, and see what happens. But I think I’ll just put the box to the curb and become the neighborhood hero for a day.

*****

I hope those 300 or so words leave you with the same inspired feeling I get. 

 

With them in mind, I’m motivated to invite you to -- if not literally, then at least in your imagination –

• Find a Great Big Empty Box …
• Hop inside …
• And see what happens.

TGIM ACTION IDEA: Hop in to break out of the box.

The phrase “think outside the box” slips too easily and meaninglessly from our lips these days. In many ways I suppose we have little idea how to do this; break away from the daily routine and rules and conventions that confine us and our thinking to achieve the accomplishments we’re really capable of.

 

TGIM IDEA IN ACTION: Play is a great way to escape the mind-narrowing confines of daily routine.

The same intense, focused pace day after day invites burnout, not creativity. If you can’t actually find a Great Big Empty Box and “playmates” to share it with –

 

Make up your own game.

Take a major break. If your ability to reclaim a sense of I-don’t-wanna-grow-up play and wonder seems beyond  recall, one way to initiate the process is to ask: 

What do you most enjoy? Do it, with childlike abandon.

That means, unless you can really let go and enjoy every moment and every aspect of the “game,” playtime DOES NOT include a frustrating round of business-deal golf or a country club tennis match or the competitive company softball league.

However –

• If golf is your game, you might take a bunch of kids for a round of miniature golf.
• Or play some tennis with a right-minded buddy, each using your non-dominate hand. That would be interesting.
• Or get the most-easy-going members of the softball team together to play stoopball or Jersey-style stick ball with a broken broom handle and a pink spaldeen hi-bounce. (If you don’t know what a “spaldeen” is, look it up. You missed something nearly as good as The Great Big Empty Box in your childhood.)

► Or do the goofiest (legal) thing you can conceive of.

 

► Or maybe: Do nothing.

Give yourself a sabbatical. As the tongue-in-cheek observation goes, “Even God rested on the seventh day” – thus the biblical origin of the concept that in recent times has come to mean “any extended absence in the career of an individual in order to achieve something.”

 

Break out of the box to achieve your something. Don’t allow yourself to be perpetually caught up in the purchase, loading, transportation, unloading, and assembly processes of life.

TGIM Takeaway: Unload all that from your box and put it aside so you may take real advantage of the Great Big Empty Box that’s available to you if only you appreciate its power.

Celebrate its emptiness with a joyful heart. Share that delight with other right-minded “kids.” Play until you break the box or break out of the box and find camaraderie, closeness and the liberty of unbounded thinking.

 

So, now that I’ve been there in my mind --

 

I’m going to hang on to my box, intact, until the warmer weather arrives. Then I’m considering putting it at the curb the day after the weekly recycling pickup.

I’ll be interested in seeing if hero status is still achievable in a time and neighborhood of highly structured team sports, arranged playdates and after school activities, and privileged children sitting alone, head down, absorbed in some electronic gadget.

 

Embracing my inner Peter Pan in 2014.

 

You do the same. Teach the children well.

Geoff Steck
Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing

8 Depot Square

Englewood, NJ 07631
201-569-5373
tgimguy@gmail.com

P.S.  “Don’t keep forever on the pubic road. Leave the beaten track occasionally or dive into the woods. You will be certain to find something that you have never seen before. One discovery will lead to another, and before you know it, you will have something worth thinking about to occupy your mind. All the really big discoveries are the results of thought.” The great discoverer, inventor, and thinker Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) said that.