Choice.
In this day and age, we act as if choice is the ultimate in freedom. This makes some sense, of course, when someone else is making your choices for you. When a government decides what job you are allowed to perform, what you will be paid for it, and what goods you may own, choice certainly looks like the only path to freedom.
Push too far in the other direction, however, and you find yourself imprisoned by choice. A person stands, bewildered, in the produce section of an enormous supermarket, with no clue what he wants to eat. "Pears or peaches? Red seedless grapes, green seedless grapes, or black seedless grapes? What's a kumquat and is it good to eat?" A person stands in front of a closet stuffed with clothing, unable to find anything to wear. We have thousands of channels... and "nothing" is on. The highschool student panics; he graduates in five days and has no idea what he is going to do next.
What is the answer to this dilemma? I am starting to hear people talk of the 'necessity' of having the government make these choices for you, in such a way that they will be good for the entire country first, under the assumption that, since you are part of this country, anything good for this country will be good for you. The founders of my country rejected that notion and reversed it. If it is good for you, in a land where you are simply not allowed to come by it through theft or deceit, surely it is good for the country! Does this mindset doom you to the prison of choice? It was not meant to do so.
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." - John Adams
What does that mean? Are people not allowed to be U.S. citizens unless they are Christians? Are atheists incapable of living in a free society? The actual intent of this statement runs deeper. John Adams was talking about boxes.
Specifically, he was talking about a people who make their own boxes.
What is the value of choice? I submit that it is not standing in the supermarket looking bewildered, but the ability to choose which restraints you will put upon yourself when picking your food. I approach the produce section and pick out only what is on sale, whatever it is. I'll learn how to cook it later. Someone else chooses the few things that they are not allergic to. Someone else is working her way through the alphabet, and today is C, so she picks up collard greens, carrots, and chick peas. Yet another will only buy produce if it has been grown within ten miles of the store location.
Let each of them be convinced in their own mind.
In this blog, I will very likely be giving examples and ideas of boxes that I have chosen, or boxes that I think other people may enjoy. The important thing to remember here is that I would not think of claiming that my boxes are for everybody. I believe that the most important thing is to understand the need for boxes and the freedom that boxes provide, and to enjoy the boxes for the sake of the boxes, rather than to desperately eschew boxes until you have no idea which way to step, and then to accept a situation that forces someone else's boxes upon everyone, for the sake of having some sort of structure in your own life.
Own your boxes.
Love your boxes.
Enjoy learning about the way other people have built theirs.
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