boxes

It's funny that no matter how old you get, all of your life's...stuff...can be fit into boxes, big and small.

In college it's the boxes you fit in your (parents') car. Soon, you become more independent and maybe it's now an apartment, which is a series of rented boxes. You get some money, so maybe start traveling with carry-on boxes. You eat a lot of cereal, which is in boxes. Maybe you meet a special someone and choose to make it official with something in a box. And if/when there are kids, there are bassinets, and cribs. Also, they are more likely to play with (in) the box the toys came in. Your front door is regularly littered with boxes from the internet, a little Christmas surprise you treat yourself to every other day. 

Along the way, you will move, one, two, three, or many more times. You go through everything you own, and it goes (back) in boxes, which you put in a box on wheels, to go to your next box. And hopefully this next one is your last, because while the adventure of moving can be exciting, the act of moving can be the worst. I've done it far too many times. I'm may be far from done, but for now I am weary.

But it's a healthy exercise, packing boxes. It's a reminder not just of what you've done, and collected over the years. It's an excercise, a reminder, that this is all just...stuff. These things are not which matter most. It's the people you're packing with, moving to, moving from. The experiences you had with them that resulted in the thing that is going in the box, or being left behind. But it is just stuff. The stuff is a totem to the memory, which you had most likely forgotten about until you put it in/took it out of that box. It is just stuff. Put in a box.

And then, the years go on. You get more boxes. You forget about the boxes, and the things in them, until you stumble upon them. But hopefully it is people, not boxes that are on your mind most days. As that is a life fulfilled.

And as a far smarter person once said, you find yourself in the final box, and someone has put you in it.