Forgive me if explaining my box and ladder metaphor feels like I’m explaining a joke…

Metaphors have great value in that they allow us to make our own meaning, and they often provide visuals that carry much more meaning and convey it much more quickly than what we can squeeze into a more left-brained, tangible explanation of an idea. Feel free to keep whatever interpretation and rich connections you had made of my box and ladder story as Kyle did. What follows is my unpacking of what boxes and ladders mean to me and what boxes and ladders actually look like in our lives, so that you can find your hard corners and stiffnesses that are keeping you stuck.

We’ve grown up in a world where we’ve been taught that, to be safe, successful and happy one day, we need to pick a box – you know, a label, a thing we want to be when we grow up, like an accountant or a nurse or a lawyer.

We want to be safe, successful and happy. So we peak into a few boxes, and then, when it’s time, we make our choice and we climb inside a box.

Of course, it’s a box shape – and most of us are other shapes, and so some of the corners hurt and sometimes we feel squashed and pinched in. But we’re relieved to have found our safe box. Because that means that we can start to do the thing that everyone says will get us happiness and success… climbing to the top of the ladder.