Box? What box? Insight by Lorraine Glowczak

We’ve all heard the term, “think outside the box.” What does that really mean? Yes, it’s true that the conventional definition to that statement is to think unconventionally; to shift one’s perspective beyond the status quo to create solutions to difficult problems – but that explanation seems, well, like the inside of a box.

We are all presented with challenges and problems on a daily basis in which it is required to put on our thinking caps and find a creative solution. But sometimes, there are those challenges that land in our lap that catapults us into a new territory where shapes as we know them do not exist.

Those sorts of challenges rarely come in a nice rectangular package tied with a neatly secured bow

where innovative thought solves the problem. Nope – these difficulties usually come in the form of malleable blobs that one can’t seem to get a steady grasp. And once you think you do – it begins to shift shape again and your creative problem solving goes into overdrive. There is no box to think outside of.

In many of this week’s articles, I have discovered this happening more than once – individuals who have been challenged beyond “convention”, whose experiences come with unimaginable pain and hardships. They not only survived, but rose above and profoundly moved forward with pure genius. I stand in awe of those individuals who blew the concept of a box to pieces.

I also bow to those who give their time, money and energy to support those very individuals and the causes that steady the shaky grounds. My hat goes off to people like Susan and Raymond Dupuis and groups like St. Ann’s Episcopal Church for their true creative brilliance. (See front page articles, “A local couple uses their passion for dance to give back to the community” and “Seventh annual Kelli’s 5K to donate funds to RSU14 and local boy battling cancer.”)

Sometimes, in this crazy journey called life where things are rarely straightforward and there are no sharp defining edges that even form a shape of a box, there are those who somehow take “thinking outside the box” to a whole new level – where even the notion of a box holds no barrier to living in a creative, innovative manner with strength, grace and wisdom.