Boxes.

Everyone is put into boxes. We do it based on race, gender, religion, and wealth. From there we start breaking it down into what people wear, talk, and what groups they seem to claim allegiance to in terms of politics, religion, and social cliques.

The problem, though, are that some of these boxes are harder than others, and on top of that, some of these boxes are the ones other people have put you into.

To wit: Being a black guy who’s into metal and skateboarding breaks a few boxes and ideals and makes it harder to be accepted in others. Being a white woman who sings soul music breaks a few boxes and ideals and makes it harder to be accepted in others.

Boxes are these weird things that we all do and put people into. At first everyone is in one box, but as we get older we start trying to organize and sort things. As we grow, we start getting validation of certain traits belonging to one box or another, and those boxes become more and more organized.

Then we meet people who break those boxes in either multiple ways or ways we’ve never seen before. At that point we start dealing with either wanting to see more or run. But, at one point, we may start realizing that they aren’t really breaking a box but they are, in fact, just a new one, so into that new box they go.

Boxes allow us to understand things, to fear things, to love things, and to hate things. Boxes segment things into things that make sense, and things that don’t. They allow us to see the world in a way that makes sense, to bring order to the overall chaos and almost nonsensical world that we’re in, and to even help us deal with changes in our environment or world.

Boxes are weird.

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