Thank you for your questions. I liked thinking about looking at the possibilities, and having people try to shove one's thoughts back into "reality." It occurred to me that while there might be an objective reality out there, where we can agree that it is raining, or that if you drop a rock from your hand it will fall to the ground, that there is another kind of reality. There is a human-created reality that is very fluid. This is the reality a lot of people talk about when they tell someone to get real. The human-created reality is learned. It is a series of agreements, most of which are unspoken and unwritten. It governs what is possible and what is decreed impossible. However, it is achievable to move mentally outside that reality. When one does, it's called thinking outside the box. :) The interesting thing about thinking outside the box is that to do so, one has to at some point acknowledge that there was a box, and that you put yourself in the box. It's conceivable one might unconsciously self-limit one's possibilities because one was taught that it is wrong to go outside that socially created and agreed upon box.
In my limited experience, some people fear other people going outside the box because they themselves do not want to admit there is a box. Because they are afraid of what they've stuffed in there, or hidden outside of it. So they try to keep others inside the box, too, so they can stay "safe" from their truths, or their pain.
It took me a while to realize that I can survive trips outside the box. I will be ok.
Thanks again for the chance to reflect! And I very much enjoyed the "nothing grows in comfort zones."
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.