Thank you for a wonderful reply, @elsbeth!
I suppose one of the things that has always gotten me in trouble-- and in some sense led to this post-- is my questioning why we need "a box." Why don't we just throw away the box and simply regard situations from the perspective of possibilities?
Well, this evidently makes a lot of people wildly uncomfortable, and they come running at me with lots of asserstions about what "we" and "one" SHOULD do, in the world. Because it's "the done thing." And it can be "counted on."
And I'm OK with that. It makes sense that we have an agreement to stop at a STOP sign... and me making up my own rules on the spur of the moment doesn't further the cause of greater humanity. But it's still nice to take out ideas and discuss them with others... and examine the possibilties.