Literary Corner

The frown on my doctor’s face said it all as he disposed of the used tongue depressor. But his not-so-subtle suggestion that it might be time for me to “get out of the box”— the cigar box, that is—had an unintended effect. It got me thinking more about boxes than dealing with the cause of my irritated throat.

Think about it. Boxes permeate every facet of our daily lives. From cradle to grave, we reside, work, fight, play, travel, rejuvenate and exit life in boxes of one kind or another: cribs, playhouses, swimming pools, offices, trains, hotels, hospitals and burial vaults to name a few. And through it all, we rely on even smaller boxes to keep safe what comic George Carlin so humorously characterizes as our “stuff.” Carry-on Luggage, coolers and jewelry boxes spring to mind as examples.

Why are these box-like designs worth itemizing? Because they’re the outer-world manifestations of our innermost cognitive structures, the boundaries of which define what and how each of us think, believe, behave and create. I like to call them “mind boxes.”

And why is all this important? Because these metaphoric boxes harbor gatekeepers, the internal spin doctors, which, if left unchallenged, can hobble our abilities to observe objectively, think rationally and interpret fairly what our five senses take in from the world outside.

But where is the evidence? One has only to look at our clichés. Where did the expression “thinking out of the box” come from in the first place? Then there are common phrases such as “he just doesn’t fit in.” Just what about him doesn’t fit in, and into what? Could such clichés refer to behaviors deemed to be within the bounds of a subconscious mind box of the person pronouncing judgment? Probably. What we do see are the outer-world consequences: intolerance, extremism, human rights violations, terrorism, bigotry and war. Perhaps it’s nature’s plan that we live and die as victims of box-like mind sets, whether of our own or another’s making.

Whatever the truth may be, it seems to me we waste all too much of our life energies trying to promulgate, justify, reinforce, explore or escape our proverbial boxes. Instead, why not enlist those same energies to develop a more flexible, less box-like mindset that can embrace boxes different from our own? Or does Mother Nature’s genetic trickery prevent us from doing so by arresting our cognitive development, much as a governor throttles down a city bus when a pre-programmed maximum speed level is reached?

But how does all this relate to my smoking dilemma?

Well, it seems that I have come to associate writing with cigar smoking, a myopic box of my own making. Without a cigar, my precious prose simply goes missing. It’s happening now.

With hands clenched over the keyboard, my eyes jump from the blank computer screen to the empty cigar box by my office window. Will they come today? My fingers unfurl as the UPS delivery van breezes into the drive. From the parcel I’m handed emanate the familiar siren calls, luring me to the treacherous tobacco shoals within where my words are held hostage. I try to steer away, but Mother Nature’s governor throttles back my resolve. As I rip away the wrapping and pluck out a cigar, I vow again that this box will be my last, but wonder: Am I deluding myself?

The answer comes from my arthritic thirteen-year-old Cocker Spaniel, Abby, who watches me contentedly through the open gate of her pet cage. It dawns on me that Abby’s re-adoption of the cage in which she was housebroken as a puppy is motivated not by the cage’s questionable comforts, but by the false perception of security she associates with being inside it. As an experiment, I put the cigar to my mouth, but delay lighting it. I am surprised when my prose begins to fill the screen. The movie What about Bob springs to mind and with it, star Bill Murray’s cliché: “Baby steps.” Not easy to get out of the box, but maybe there’s hope for me yet. Then again, to use another cliché, “only time will tell.”maybe there’s hope for me yet. Then again, to use another cliché, “only time will tell.”