“What do you think it is?” he asks the girl and boy crouching on both sides of him as all three dip their heads down lower to the leaves to get a closer look.

“Whatever it is, it looks broken,” the little girl says, poking the metal contraption with a stick.

“A robot?”

“Probably a UFO,” says the other boy, having remained quiet up until this point.

“It’s a box…” I say, coming up behind the Three Young Ones. “Or… it was a box at least.”

I take a knee beside them and pick the ramshackled piece of metal up from the casket of leaves in the ground. As if it were a broken-winged blue bird. Tiny & Delicate Sing a Song of Mercy.

“Well that’s pretty boring,” says the little girl, standing to place her hands on her hips.

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But this box has quite the story behind it. Maybe you wont quite understand it yet, but later in life it will all make sense.  Come, let’s find a place to sit in the shade and I’ll tell you everything.”

The Tale of the Box.

The Box formed many, many years ago. Long before iPods & iMacs or iHomes & iPads. Long before automobiles or poodle skirts or sewing machines. For centuries, stacked upon one another like playing cards, living and breathing beings have stuffed themselves into this very Box.

“But its way too tiny,” says the little girl. “I couldn’t even fit my baby brother in that box.”

“You have a very good eye. You see, they never got to fitting. Never found an angle to sit in or a way to be comfortable. And if you had asked them when they were your size and just your age if they’d ever squeeze into this Box one day, they would have told you ‘No, no, no.”

But they got stuck. Trapped like Rapunzel, High Up in Her Tower with Yards & Yards of Unruly Locks.”

“How do you get trapped in a box like that?” asks the little boy with red framed glasses.

“Good question. I can tell you that it happens very slowly at first….

A small pitter patter on the roof of the Box…

Should & Would falling from the sky.

Then louder…

Droplets of Mustn’t & Must

Then more robust…

Hail pellets of Cannot & Never

Then Thicker…

Disbelief. And Give Up Now. And Foolish to Believe You Could Follow Your Heart.

And Heavier…

Why. Try? Too. Small. No. Good. Worth. Less.

And before long, a heavy layer of all the reasons why the Box is the safest, smartest and most logical place to stay sits unmoving on the roof. And people stop trying to break free. Or Break Out. Or Break the Mold.

And they make Less Noise. And try to take up Less Space. The Box becomes the very place where people learn to keep themselves so that they never have to grow the courage to crawl out and seize the world by its Love Handles.”

One) That my Spirits were Tattered & Torn but not beyond repair. They could be fixed with a hammer, a few nails, and some care.

Two) That my dreams, still strong, had grown tired of me. They would stand No Longer to not come to be. They’d pack up their things and turn with a twirl, hitch hike the stars until they found a New Girl.

I’d have spent a lifetime in the Box, or maybe even two, if I only used the carved windows for looking purposes and never as a way to crawl out of my own doubt and fear.

I could have spent forever with my hand to the thick glass, waiting for the voice webbed in my soul to whisper, “Climb out and join them.”

Climb. Out. And. Join. Them.

“I don’t think I’ll ever want to be stuck in that Box. It looks so tiny and lonely,” says the little girl, cringing and shuddering.

“And I hope you never do get stuck in the Box. It won’t ever be much of a home. And it won’t ever make you happy. The longer you get stuck, the harder it will be to break out. Heavier Rooftops as Life Goes On.

So go on playing today, Loving the World through Little Girl & Boy Lenses. But remember this later, if your Little Minds can Hold it Tight… Those dreams that stir you, the ones you paint on easels today and draw in crayon tomorrow, they are precious. And one day they will come to you and say, “I want to come true now. I am ready to come true. So what are you and I going to do to make me true?”

And that will be the question… the question that will either put you in the Box or Break the Box Right From the Hinges before you ever try to fit a body inside.

Break the hinges from the beginning, you won’t fit inside that box. Break the hinges from the very start; you were made for wonderful things.