Box-Making and Box-Breaking: Mapping Our Boundaries, Opening Our Hearts
We all live in boxes. Not the kind you tape shut and stack in your garage, but invisible ones—boundary lines that define what we believe, who we trust, and who we fear. I call this box-making: the unconscious sorting system we inherit from our families, communities, and cultures. We divide the world into good and bad, clean and unclean, safe and unsafe.
Box-making helps us make sense of a complex world. It gives us a map to navigate life, a place to belong, and a system for staying safe. These boxes are not inherently bad—they're often necessary. As a child raised in the LDS Church I had an aversion to coffee, tobacco, and alcohol, and was nervous around those who didn't share my standards. A Muslim may have similar feelings about pork and Jews may turn away from non-kosher food. Outside religion, someone raised in a big city might grow up hearing stories or absorbing attitudes that rural people are backward or out of touch, while someone from a small town might be taught—explicitly or implicitly—that big cities are chaotic, dangerous, or full of people who don't share their values. A person immersed in academic circles might absorb a bias against manual trades, while someone raised in a blue-collar environment might learn to distrust people who speak with too much intellectual authority. These boxes that we adopt divide us from each other, but they also offer direction, protection, and identity.
I remember the safety I felt in my cultural and religious box. It gave me clarity and belonging. I felt certain about who I was and who I was not. The box validated me—and I defended it because it felt sacred. But life has a way of cracking open the containers we once thought were solid. For me, that moment came during a faith crisis while studying church history. My previously black and white viewpoint started to dissolve. At the time I was serving in local church leadership and one day I mustered my courage and shared from the pulpit that I was going through a hard time. I said that I had learned that church history was much more complex than I had previously realized. I expressed my faith that though I was experiencing difficulty, I believed God could help me get through it. Immediately following my comments, two prominent church members in a row stepped to the pulpit and testified that there was no reason to doubt anything related to church history. I know they were well-intentioned, and were trying to help establish safety. But as they expressed certainty, I felt pushed away. For the first time in my life I experienced the space outside my church box that I had held so dear. It was terrifying--and I suddenly understood what it felt like to be on the outside.
Finding myself in this new territory was overwhelming. Church, which had once been a place of deep comfort for me, suddenly felt disorienting and emotionally charged. But at the same time, something in me opened. I began to see people I had once misunderstood or avoided. I started to recognize the pain that others were carrying at the edges of the community. Where I had once felt guarded or skeptical, I now felt compassion. My box had made me blind to their beauty. When it broke, love flooded in.
Box-breaking, like box-making, has gifts to offer. It can free us from judgment. It can soften our hearts. It can make us more human. But there are dangers here too. Sometimes, we replace our old boxes with a new ones: a box that labels anyone still inside the old system as ignorant, dangerous, or unenlightened. It's easy to condemn those who are still in the boxes we ourselves have just escaped. We might feel an impulse to grab our axes and swords and go on a crusade against every box we spot in someone else.
But if we slow down and remember our own time in the box, we may find a different posture. We might remember how comforting it was. How necessary it felt. How fiercely we once defended it. And we may come to realize that even though we've stepped out of one box, we're still living within others—some of which we can't yet see. This can help us hold others with gentleness, even when we see the harm their boxes may cause.
Perhaps you’ve noticed that trying to break someone else’s box doesn’t usually go well. It can feel like an attack, even if it’s well-intentioned. More often than not, it leads to defensiveness and division—not the kind of transformation we hope for. It’s a reminder of an old truth: people are more likely to take off their coats in the warm sun than in a cold wind. That same wisdom applies here: warmth opens more than force ever could. And while it’s tempting to focus outward, I’ve got my hands full just tending to my own boxes. That alone is meaningful, challenging work—more than enough for today.
Just to be clear: I’m not saying we should walk away from all community structures. I’m still part of many—including my church—and I find real growth there. These communities often stretch me in meaningful ways, challenging me to reflect more deeply and live more intentionally. Within those very groups, I still catch myself forming new boxes—new lines between who's in and who's out. When I notice that happening, I try to pause, take a breath, and stay open. Of course, I don’t always succeed—sometimes my old reflexes kick in and my mind builds a box before I even notice. But practicing helps, and every small moment of awareness makes a difference.
What I'm suggesting here is that rather than focusing on the boxes outside of us, what if we focused on becoming conscious of, and opening, our own boxes? And what if, rather than trying to force people out of their containers, we became warm, steady, and present? What if we became the kind of people whose love made it safe to wonder, to wrestle, and to grow?
Because in the end, it’s only when our own boxes break that the light gets in. That light—of compassion, of clarity, of love—isn’t something we can manufacture. It arrives the moment we stop clinging to certainty and start opening to something deeper.
To close, I invite you to consider a few challenging questions with me:
Who is outside my current boxes? What borders have I drawn around my compassion? Can I soften the edges? Can I imagine what the world might look like if I actually loved my enemies?
Because paradoxically, when we stop trying to break other people's boxes, and focus instead on tending to our own, we just might become the sun that melts the walls.
And in that warmth, real transformation begins.
