Boxes
Pandora's box -
noun
- a source of extensive but unforeseen troubles or problems
Zeus gives a box to Pandora, the first woman, with one strong stipulation: don’t open it. Like almost anyone, the prohibition on opening the box was actually the catalyst to that occurring. (At least that is the way it works for me.) She opens the box and all kinds of evils and miseries were unleashed to affect mankind.
Most of us suffer under the idea that there is stuff in a box or closet that we just need to keep closed. That if we open up to those mysteries, all kinds of misery and evil will be unleashed.
But my experience has been exactly the opposite.
What is actually lurking in the shadows is opportunity, goodness, and the foundation for so much restoration. It is walking into those closets and looking unflinchingly into those boxes where all kinds of great things begin.
The problem is that most of us have spent our entire life trying to keep that stuff in there.
Keeping everything under wraps.
Aggressively looking the other direction.
Busying ourselves with all manner of things.
Pretending the boxes don’t even exist.
Most of us are doing a pretty good job at all that. The first step to unlocking the mysteries that strongly dictate our behavior is to actually acknowledge or discover that they are even there...shoved away in that box. The next step is to have the courage to open that rascal up.
The reality is that all of us live in a fallen world and each of us is operating as a reaction to the vagaries of the particular portion of that world we’ve encountered.
- The indecisive leader fearing his father’s disapproval.
- The hiding leader shrouded in the shame of their past failure.
- The fearful leader quietly operating in the reaction to some childhood trauma.
- The guarded leader still controlled by past embarrassment.
When you meet someone, you are meeting the mixed basket of every experience they’ve lived and either an integrated, healed, wholehearted version of them or a disintegrated, unhealed, shadow of who they could be. The delta between those two different archetypes can only be bridged by looking at what is lurking in all those boxes.
A leader I know just opened up a box he didn’t know existed. It was a category of shame that he had been operating under for which he had no awareness. On the other side of that journey backward has been restoration, healing, restoration of relationships, and all kinds of other life-giving things.
Like most people who have walked this journey, he wouldn’t even consider going back to a life with that box still closed. He is just beginning to discover how the thing locked away in that box has operated and impacted his life. (One of the great privileges of walking with so many leaders is helping them to be aware of and open these boxes that become treasure chests.)
It is going to be a glorious experience to watch this leader view more of his life with a less veiled face. Opening that box may not have been easy, but the treasure found there is going to just keep on giving.
Like most of us who have walked that road, the next box will be much easier to open. He might even go on a treasure hunt to seek it out!
Consider
- What kind of awareness do you have of how you operate and why?
- Do you think there are things from your life that determine the way you behave? Experiences that affect the way you predominately view the things going on around you?
- Are you up to going on a journey to discover what is keeping you from being wholehearted and free? LIFEPLAN is a safe and structured place to go on that journey.