Out of the Box. Like it? Or not?
Forenote: Before reading any of my posts please know that my writing is an ongoing reflection of the conversations in my head—a living, evolving process rather than a final product. Sharing it is just my way of bringing you into that dialogue and letting it change and grow. Thank you for sharing in this journey with me.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about boxes.
It feels like we’re caught between two big forces. On one side, there’s rapid change—new ideas, new ways of thinking, a world that feels bigger and constantly pulls us into the unfamiliar. It’s exciting, but also overwhelming. On the other side, there’s pressure to stay inside familiar boxes—old ways of thinking that don’t really fit who we are anymore. This has always been the way at any point in our evolution.
As humans, we have a natural urge to sort things out—to label, define, and organize the world into neat categories. Maybe it’s because uncertainty makes us uneasy, so we cling to fleeting absolutes. We analyze the unfamiliar through filters of fear. The psychologist Ernest Becker once said we build cultures—and even language—as a way to manage our fear of chaos. It gives us a sense of control in a world that’s anything but predictable.
But the trade-off is that we get stuck. We lose the flexibility to adapt when things shift. We see that push/pull going on now for many reasons.
Language plays a big part in this. It’s how we make sense of the world—but it also shapes how we experience it. Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” If we can’t name something, we might not even notice it. Language offers a sense of stability—but sometimes that’s just an illusion.
So why do we cling so tightly to fixed meanings—especially in a world that refuses to stay still?
I think back to the 1994 Northridge earthquake in L.A. I was living above the San Fernando Valley when it hit early in the morning. I was half-asleep, disoriented, not quite sure what was happening. But it was the aftershock the next day that really stayed with me. I stood on what I thought was solid ground and watched trees sliding around like they were on water. The earth was moving as liquid beneath them—beneath me.
That moment changed me. The ground I trusted wasn’t solid at all. It was alive—and always shifting.
Language, I’ve come to realize, is the same. We treat it like solid ground—dependable and fixed—but it’s always in motion, quietly evolving in the background. Words change. Meanings shift. What feels clear today might feel confusing tomorrow. Even as I write this, I’m changing. My thoughts are changing. What I write now isn’t what I would have written ten minutes ago.
Linguist Ferdinand de Saussure said that language isn’t made up of fixed labels—it’s a web of relationships. Words don’t point to absolute truths; they only make sense in relation to each other. That makes language fluid. It moves with us.
And yet, we often act like it’s rigid. We use it to define who we are, draw boundaries, and tell the stories we want to believe. But when we do that, we risk mistaking the label for the thing itself. Cognitive scientist George Lakoff talked about how our thinking is shaped by metaphors we don’t even notice—like treating ideas as objects, or arguments as war.
But what happens when those metaphors stop working? When the meanings we’ve depended on start to shake?
That aftershock reminded me: even the ground beneath our feet can shift without warning. Since then, I’ve stopped seeing language as solid ground. To me, it’s more like an ocean—vast, fluid, alive with motion. It’s not something we can pin down forever. Maybe it’s not supposed to be.
And maybe that’s where real growth begins—not in the boxes we build or cling to, but in the moments they fall apart. Those are the openings where something new can emerge.
Buddhism teaches that clinging to permanence is the root of suffering—that life is change. And when we stop resisting that, we don’t just survive the shift—we evolve with it.
So maybe the goal isn’t to build stronger boxes or find clearer labels, but to get more comfortable swimming in the ocean. To trust that even in uncertainty, we’re still finding our way as we always have.
