The bucket and the box

An interesting internal debate has invaded my brain after watching the very touching movie the bucket list. There are two aspects about death for me that has awaken all this thinking, fear of death itself and what you will do before you reach your own death.

Have you built, reached or conquered what you wanted? You start to think about your own list and realizing that all the years you lived as a responsible adult, your ability to dream transformed itself into the ability to cope the reality of your life, work, kids, family, routine, husband or ex husband etc, to the point were you no longer give yourself time to remember what that fire you had as a younger person felt like.

Then for a few months "the box" concept started to nag me, making no sense until this weekend. Finally the revelation came, it’s amazing that for so long I keep trying to find my space in “the box”, in the ideal "life" that everyone keeps signing up to live in. The conclusion of this long well executed effort, was that all the years I searched for the same everyone searches, and I kept failing finding it. I cannot say in a totally absolute way, as there are always a lot to learn and even to positive receive when we take the wrong turn in life.

Trying to put myself in the same box of what is expected for everyone, meaning that you have to settle in a specific kind of way in order to fit in and find happiness has become the most questioned concept of my personal self-discovery.

Settling for that "uncomplicated" reality of the perfect life, perfect marriage, perfect family life in a perfect world, although possible for some it’s proved mostly impossible for so many in the long run (Just consider the statistics of divorce).

I ask myself why? One of the answer I found is because we buy into this whole idea without really identifying what we want, how we want it and we stop standing up for our on believes and wishes. Social presure pays a toll on all of us.

This doesn’t mean that the feelings of the people involved, who want to fit in “the box” are not real, sincere and well intended. Problem lies when we seduce ourselves and others that this is the correct way to happiness and acceptance. We seduce with the strengths of feelings like love, we convince ourselves and others to take the plunge… Then takes you some years to realize, that you are not happy, you blame it in the other persons faults, life realities, love and other factors. I did, but I come to understand that it was me all along believing “the box” was the ultimate status quo of happiness, and forcing the idea to others. The rest were consequences of signing up for that project, recruiting the candidate and selling the idea based on those strong feeling of love, when in reality I knew at the bottom of my heart this was not the way - still we took the plunge into that box.

When you reach this conclusion, then you know that all the faults in you and your ex were not as significant as you thought, in any case who is really perfect anyway? Specially, who is really going to perform perfectly and remain motivated under the wrong conditions? The grand fault is believing that there is only one BOX, and it takes you years to realize that NO, there are plenty of boxes out there and opening yourself to that idea opens the doors to truly accepting yourself which ultimately might take you to find the right person for you.

Of course I love family life and would love to have a functional relationship, but I know now that in order to find the right one for me, I need to look outside “ the box” idea. There out there, wonders someone who has similar believes and mostly that loves and values their true independence enough to know that is possible to have it, yet still share and have a fun and committed life.

The bucket represent the opportunity to reconsider doing what you dreamt and the newly dreams crated in your present; the box represent the life limitations based in pre -conceived ideas and life modules that I know are not suitable for all, otherwise should the box be the ultimate way of living, then this world is full of dysfunctional people including myself.
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