What does it mean to live Outside of the Box? I mean, literally Outside of the Box… Imagine with me Now …
As humans we have so many possibilities as far as what we create while we are here. Creations come in all shapes & sizes and fit all manner of necessities and desires in lifetimes. There is a creation niche for every life style. The possibilities are truly endless. As it is said, imagination’s the limit.
One thing dear to me is house-making. When I think of “house”, images flow into my mind of all the houses I have seen. There is the house style I grew up around and in: It is boxed and has certain rooms that fill criteria of what a house “is”. There is the kitchen, the sitting room, the living room, the library, the basement, the bedrooms and extra bedrooms, etc. All of these rooms have “feels” to them that dictate what can happen in the room. The sitting room is nice and basically untouched- never put your feet on the couch. The living room has a TV in it, a fire place, we probably eat in there occasionally and put our feet up on the couch whenever we want. The kitchen is, naturally, where the cooking and food storage & prep happens, people congregate and eat in here. Homeowners have guest bedrooms, but usually don’t sleep in them (unless there is a transition in the relationship or someone needs some space or is sick) as they are reserved for guests who come. Etc, the list of “the way things are” goes on. But who makes these rules & why is this what we think of when we conjure the idea of “house”?
On my travels in life, I saw many other versions of “house”: natural cob homes seriously and playfully made of mud, clay, sand, straw and wood, homes that have round walls, homes that are one room with kitchen merging into sitting nook for breakfast merging into a “live TV” of the chicken coop. I have lived in canvas yurts and places without electricity that have cob walls with heart-shaped reliefs for candles. Homes half-finished with manual water-pumps and a swirling cob staircase. I have stayed in mud shacks with dirt floors where the kitchen is its own building detached from the house so that the house doesn’t burn down in case of a kitchen fire. “House” when viewed from this bigger perspective, conjures up a completely different set of images.
In my dream last night, I was invited to live in a house near a college campus in someone’s backyard. It was an old and infamous house that was very thin and long with triangular and rectangular contours. I felt excited to live in this house, even though it wasn’t very practical and its thinness felt a little cramped in certain parts. I felt excited because it was different and every time I was in it, along with feeling a little impractical-ness, I remembered magic. I felt different and this feeling allowed, even encouraged, me to think outside of the box. I felt like I was in a slightly magical house, because it was of a different shape and had its own character in its unique building style. Being in the house reminded me of the magical, literally “out-of-the-box” realities of life. I was no longer “boxed-in” & being in a place that resonated with that thought allowed me to live within my own limitless and unboxed imagination more easily.
I believe it is as simple as this: We imagine a “house” and there is the standard box which comes to mind. But Why? Why is a house a square thing with so many typical rooms with typical feelings? What if stepping out of the box with something so seemingly simple as what kind of house we live in is actually able to propel us individually and ultimately collectively into “living outside of the box” in our daily lives? Imagining What could be instead of living within the mind-set (or set-mind) of What already is and therefore What will continue to be? There is a great need & opportunity Today to create from our imaginations. Building codes can shift over time and as they do nothing is limiting us save our own actually limitless imaginations and beliefs around What is possible….