Thoughts on a Craft Box

Perusing through the aisles of the craft store, I could feel “Focus!” losing the battle against “Shiny!” as I spotted item after item of cool new inventions and gadgets for the happy artsy-craftsy geek. After finally reaching my destination at the DMC flosses (after several semi-intentional wrong-turns), I found an entire section of interesting floss and bead boxes. Created for convenience, easy transportation, and above all organization, many of the boxes reflected some clever ingenuity. And that is what got me thinking…

 

An organizer box is just the perfect tool in so many ways. It keeps things so together, so pure, so compact, and so uncomplicated – so very much unlike life. Because unlike the perfect and isolated little cells in an organizer box, Life spills over. When you think about it, there are parts of our lives that, in some ways, mimic individual compartments in an organizer box. For most of us, we have different roles that we play, whether it be our work-selves, our relationship-selves, our family-selves, our social-selves, our spiritual-selves, etc. And often times, these individual “selves” really don’t cross much. Oh sure, there are some exceptions. But let’s face it – sometimes it is just easier to keep them separate. Do you really want your co-workers who see you in a professional light to see you in a social setting? Do you really want the people in your church to know what kind of colorful vocabulary you use when you are around a different crowd? Do you want your family members around when you go out on a date? I’m sure you get my drift.

 

When a spill happens in an organizer box, the immediate effects are rather obvious. One single blue bead in an otherwise yellow sea of beads screams rather loudly. And to the exceptionally anal-retentive person (ehem), there can be no rest until that blue bead is put back in its proper place. But when a spill-over happens in life, it cannot be simply placed back in its original compartment, free or corruption. Think, for instance, about the awkward reality-check that happens when you run into somebody from a different social setting outside of the norm. Perhaps you find yourself distracted at the supermarket looking for your favorite brand of mayonnaise when you accidentally run your cart into somebody else’s. Looking up, you see somebody from work. Now to make things more interesting, let’s say that it is somebody that you don’t particularly like from work. Awkward! Because now you have locked eyes, and you feel that immediate need to smile and make some sort of pleasant discussion. As weird as this might be, it is certainly nowhere near as bad as running into this same co-worker in the gym sauna. Please, please, PLEASE may that towel not drop any lower!!!!!!! Yet, such things do indeed happen. And unlike the beads in the organizer-box, it isn’t possible to undo or to change.

 

How ‘bout when you go out on a Saturday night and you see somebody from another social setting in your bar – maybe somebody from your church. As you watch that person slam down beer after beer, you see an entirely different side to that person. That person dresses differently than how you normally see him/her. The actions are different. The social behavior is different. And heck, that person or people surrounding your acquaintance are not what you would have expected. Hmmm… inteddesting.

 

Life, in so many ways, is a poorly engineered-organizer box. Everything is fine for a while. But then, something happens that causes the box to spill. And those spills can lead to all kinds of interesting insights or learned bits about people, their lives, their behaviors, and their other aspects.

 

And heck, that is just the lesson I got from the organizer boxes. Don’t even get me started on the bedazzlers!