Boxes

do you ever feel weird, like you're the only one who understands you? if that compound clause describes you, well, it is far less true than you think it is, because not even you understand yourself. think about it: if you understood yourself, wouldn't it seem only right that you would have no problems in life and that, in your knowledge of yourself, you could be yourself AND not feel weird at the same time? if you could understand yourself, you should be able to acknowledge not only why you are misunderstood (or not understood) and be able to reconcile the misunderstanding--or lack of understanding to be had--with what is outside of you. but sadly, that is not what happens. ever.
almost.
there is a soultion, but we will investigate that after i've attempted to convince you about boxes.

boxes are where we put things that we want to go together in the physical world. i have a box full of shoes that i don't wear (and don't see myself wearing) but refuse to part with, i have a box full of old papers that i wrote as a philosophy major, a box of things that remind me of the good things in life before i was dying all the time, a box of random books about hegelian dialecticism and how it shaped 20th century france (don't ask, cuz i don't know), and a box of old clothes. i chose to put those things in boxes, and i chose to put those things in boxes with the things they are there with. nobody told me, 'put all these things in designated boxes, and they have to go together or i'll shoot you!' the whole point of the box is that i put what i want in there, and i group it according to how i want to group it. otherwise, if things that i don't associate with other things in the box will not be found. i will simply not think to look for 'The French Postmodernist and the Crisis in Reason' in the box of things that remind me of the good things in life before i was dying all the time.
now, boxes are great and all, but there is are times where it is counterintuitive to put things in boxes, and that time is this: any situation where boxes don't exist, which is almost every situation that people run into trouble with other people...and often when people run into trouble with other people, it puts them at odds with themselves.
I pledged a fraternity this year, which was a huge (i don't even think there exists enough text-manipulable importance connotators to express how big it was) faith thing for me. i literally knew when i was told about it that i had to pledge. i didn't know why, and i didn't know what was going to come of it, but i did know that what was going to come of it was good, whether i got in or not, despite how much pain it was going to cause me, despite how weird i was gonna end up being...again, i just knew. and that's ridiculous, because i sometimes feel like i actually knew more 3 days after becoming a christian than i do since...and i definitely knew more than before i converted.
why?
it wasn't because i was hopeful about any of it. i was actually quite the opposite, but in a weird way:  because i had peace about it but felt like i had no reason to feel peace about it (which is weirdly a form of anxiety. it's called paradoxical empathetic anxiety. it's ridiculous and makes you question your sanity when you've only ever experienced the kind that makes you feel like you're dying, cuz instead you feel like you should be feeling like you're dying...but you aren't feeling like you're dying.). i seriously felt compelled to pledge, even though my experiences said, 'NO!! YOU ARE GOING TO START DYING AGAIN AND ALL THIS SUMMER'S REHABILITATION AND GETTING YOUR LIFE BACK TOGETHER WILL BE A WASTE!!!' it was mostly unexplainable. mostly.
but anyway, back to boxes: all the people in my fraternity are at least a little off beat...in a way. but the way that they are all a little off beat is that...we don't recognize a beat that we have to synchronize to. the idea of this metaphysical beat is preposterous in itself, because the beat is a supposed self and is strictly theoretical. that makes little sense, so i will try to clarify with an example: when i first met all the active brothers as a pledge, i looked around and knew which ones i would like most and which ones i would really really really not like, just by hearing what they talked about and to a degree what they looked like (mind you, i had been a Christian for approximately 1 month at the time), but the detrimental part failed to be in who i discriminated against. the problem lied wholly in what formed the discrimination: the box.
there's this guy in my frat. he's really cool. he reminded me of my roommate from carolina: quiet, gentle, football-loving, criminal justice major, guy's guy. so naturally, since i identified with most of who he was more than the other brothers, i decided that i was gonna hang around him, because he reminded me of one of the last good things in my life before i started dying all the time (ie panic attacks, meth, anorexia, alcoholism, existential crisis): my roommate, Foster. i loved that kid. we would drink, chew backy, talk about katy perry's endowments, stumble back drunk to the dorm from 5-points, i would pass out and he would skype with his girlfriend. it was good to have a friend. and it was good to have someone who reminded me of that friend in the fraternity. but it was not good that i had an idea of him prior to extensive exposure. he caused me to go into existential crisis mode a lot...and most of the brothers did for that matter actually; sometimes as a unit, sometimes individually. anyway, since i thought he was much like a country bumpkin, i had a hard time with anything that he did that was not country bumpkin-y...such as like Lady Gaga. i literally remember thinking, 'that's not fair, he's not allowed to be goo-goo for Gaga! I'M GOO-GOO FOR GAGA!'

i didn't think it was wrong for him to like Lady Gaga any more than i thought it was wrong for me to, but the inconsistency of his personality made me a little bit angry, i will admit. it confused me, because people chrono-synclastically elsewhere in my life fit in boxes, and suddenly i'm thrown into a whole new world where boxes don't contain people...and it turns out never actually did. i was miffed, scared, confused, and felt very alone, because my classical torture was being different than other people...not that i wasn't the same, and now that suddenly everything i had previously concluded about the world was counterfactual to at least 1 person not myself, i could have exploded with what was going through my head. but instead of exploding, i just had a panic attack and called it a day.
and prayed. a LOT.

but the next day, i started realizing that most people i came across were less boxy than i had imagined them to be. my religion professor had an obsession with differentiating apocryphal literature from pseudepigraphal literature, my government professor was a Tennessee redneck conservative single mother with a black boyfriend who loves nascar (both of them actually), my beefy tennis instructor was went to a drag show over the weekend, my 80 year old computer science instructor likes Group1crew, my dad is a violinist and loves football, my mom puts tinsel in her hair recreationally, my granfather thought beef was blue until told otherwise...and my roommate from winthrop had panic attacks, and his best friend was a theater major who agreed with me that the girl from 'Dead Like Me' was weirdly hot. all of these people i had considered 'normal' until told otherwise, and when i realized this is when the fabric of reality started mending itself...with itself. (consider the prospect of mending reality with anything other than reality. it would make it not reality if part of it is unreal).
i am not necessarily an 'other'...unless i want to be. i could think of overt counterexamples to normalcy in every person in my life, but my problem couldn't be solved by just the people in my life; it had to be solved by the world at large, because the people in my life will not necessarily be the people in my life 10 years from now, so i did some investigating, and i concluded that i belong in France






...and Spain. and Nepal. and Turkey. and China. and Chile. and Australia. and Canada. and Germany...and America...and with the rest of the world, even when i can't see it, because just because i can't see it doesn't mean it's not true. 'trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He will set your paths straight.' my own understanding led me to doubt, hopelessness, depression, anxiety, drug abuse, alcoholism, addiction, anorexia, other-ness, solipsism, narcissism, obsessive compulsions, and functionlessness. if i recognize that, then what reason do i have to go back to my own understanding?

so, given that people are not boxes, what are they then?
they are containers, meant to contain the power of God, not a personality. think of the personality as just the kind of container God is using his power through.
i like to think of myself as a gatorade container. i don't know why. maybe cuz i like to run...and gatorade's delicious.