Boxes

From the age of 18, I’ve moved four times. That’s an average of 6 years per place. I am terrible at moving. I start with a brilliant plan, then the move day shows up, and I’m never ready. The whole thing collapses into an overwhelming blur. Every. Single. Time.

I’m a nerd for unique and/or fancy writing instruments. Fun stuff like hardwood pencils, fountain pens, and every style of stick pen. I also have a couple of unnecessarily expensive pens. After we did most of the house from our last move, I set up my office.

I was excited to unpack my pens and start journaling again. I unloaded all the boxes labeled office and did not find my pens. Somehow I accumulated enough paperclips, staples, and notebooks to build a fort. My pens were missing.

I went through the last few boxes packed. Those boxes you pack when moving that get everything else. I came up empty and wasn’t handling it well. Maybe I left them? Maybe someone had thrown them out? I checked all the boxes with my name, those labeled office, and I finally gave up looking.

Several months later, we were assembling bookshelves and unpacking the last boxes of books. As soon as I saw my pen pouch in the box of books, I remembered putting them there. My thought was the books would be heavy and therefore I’d be the one to carry them and therefore would be extra careful. When I was looking for pens, I never looked in these boxes because they were labeled BOOKS.

Labels can help us quickly identify things. They help us know what is the same about those things. What labels miss is what is different. I have to be careful what label I stick to myself because I might feel obligated to become that thing. I have to be careful what label I stick to you because I might only see what is the same and forget what is different. I may never find what I’m looking for if I’m only checking the labels.

Do our labels keep us from finding each other? Am I in a box I’ve outgrown? Am I in a box I never belonged in?

Be curious, be kind, be whole, do good things.