The Box

Years ago, I attended an event where one of the speakers gave a presentation on creativity and its utilization at work. He started his presentation with an example and asked a woman sitting in the front row what kind of relationship she has with her mother. The woman said that she has a really good relationship with her mother. To this, the speaker stated that I have the exact opposite experience, the relationship between me and my mother is not good. He continued: if I asked you now about what a mother is like, you would give a completely different answer than I do. He continued still. The box through which I look and value the word mother is completely different from yours. My box is small and through it I only see the things that I want to see and that I myself have experienced. Your box is much bigger than mine because your experiences are different, certainly mostly positive. He continued the train of thought further. It is almost impossible to get such a person who looks at the world through a small box to change his way of thinking. He doesn't see what someone else sees when looking through a bigger box. If you are unable to enlarge your own box, you will remain a prisoner of your small box and it will be almost impossible for you to understand or accept someone else's views, suggestions, plans or even creativity. Twenty years have passed since this event. Best thing from this presentation to me was that It made me think about things completely differently and really examine the size of my own box.