Soap Box #3

As many of you may know, I watch Glenn Beck. Now most of the time he and I get along great, but lately I've been really annoyed with him. He keeps saying that to solve problems we need to think "out of the box ." Well I hate that. As a homeschooler I have all sorts of opinions about "the box." Why am I in one in the first place, who put me here and why, and is thinking really the best way to get out of it? Once I do get out what then? Every time he uses that phrase it makes me cringe because the truth is I know the answers to all these questions that pop into my head, and the answers make me sick. I'm in this stupid box because somewhere along the line someone made me believe that there is only one way to do a given thing. Despite all the cute sayings about multiple ways to skin a cat and so forth, our culture rewards uniformity. I'm in a box, because I was taught to believe in one. My teachers throughout my life ,in school and out, all believed in the box too. That's how I got here. They couldn't tell me how to be somewhere else, because they were in a box too. So the wide open spaces of my mind were trained into four walls. Now everyone thinking the same way can be very beneficial. It can promote peace and foster comraderie when we're all on the same page, so I can see the allure; however, now we have all these mountainous problems to conquor and only out of the box thinking can save us. I don't know about anyone else, but that sounds like poetic justice to me! So I wonder, is thinking out of the box really going to get us out of it? Frankly, I believe it would be faster and easier just to lift my foot and step outside. After all, I really didn't know what I was getting into, and who would blame me for running away? I have found this to be easy and hard, frightening and liberating, and above all else vital to solving at least my own problems if not the nations. I look around me and ask why? Why do I do things the way I do? Is it because it is the best way or because it just is the way things are done? It has helped me stay out of the box most of the time to ask myself these things. However, there are still times I look around and still see that darned box. When I do I don't just step out and walk away, I jump out, set it on fire and run in any other direction! I don't ever ask my kids to think "out of the box" because I go out of my way to make sure they are never put into one. As far as I'm concerned, looking for aswers "out of the box" just reenforces that there is one. I refuse to think of myself as being anywhere in relation to "the box", and the sooner we stop believing in one the better.