“At what point do you say, ‘Wow, I really want to dangle upside down from scarves and play the violin for a living'?” This question was posed by myself and couple friends of mine as we reconnected over a cup of coffee. What is the secret to thinking so decidedly out of the box as this aerial violinist does?

Thinking outside of the box is a rather cliché concept now, the subject of countless self-help books, business seminars, and the like. Regardless, it truly is something people seem to have a hard time executing. We learn early on as children to draw inside the lines, follow all the rules, and act orderly and contained. Creativity, while not completely disregarded, is often more of an afterthought.

Similarly, we place God into boxes, and we are inevitably confused, angry, or end up in a crisis of faith if He dares to operate in such a way that disregards our tidy little God construct. It is not surprising then, with our early childhood training and neat little God boxes, that most of us also keep ourselves and our lives packaged up tightly in boxes. We go to school, build a career, get married, have kids, and those who dare to do those in a different order or on a different timeframe are often questioned or ridiculed.

It may be that our ability to categorize things and box things in serves an important purpose. In fact, our brains seem hired wired to place everything into neat little boxes.  Psychological theory calls these boxes “schemas”:  mental structures to organize information. Every time your brain receives new information, it tries to fit it inside one of its already pre-conceived schemas. It is an efficient and quick way to store, retrieve, and process information, helping us to respond quickly and appropriately to many situations. However, when we encounter new that does not fit into a schema, common reaction is to ignore or quickly forget the offending information. Occasionally, new information that differs so completely from a schema but cannot be ignored will cause an existing schema to be altered or to create a separate schema for “exceptions from the rule”.

The question is, do these schemas we have created for ourselves and our roles needlessly box us in? Let’s go back to the aerial violinist. According to her website, Janice Martin is a classically trained violinist, pianist and vocalist who works with the Cirque du Symphonie, combining her talents in violin performance with aerial acrobats. While wearing skimpy outfits and dangling upside down from scarves and rings from great heights while playing the electric violin is not exactly something that appeals to me, I would like to have this woman’s ability to completely bust out of the box.

My friends and I who were discussing this were still trying to figure out what we wanted to do “when we grew up”, despite having  graduated from college and started various jobs, careers, and families, and having turned 30. We wanted something more interesting, even beyond moving away from the typical 9-5 office job.  Are there gifts, talents and interests that I have that I previously thought I could not combine that could come together for one exceptionally unique career, much like the dangling aerial violinist? Maybe there is still hope that I can combine playing viola, writing, and drinking coffee into a fulfulling career.

Or maybe it’s even beyond that—maybe we don’t have to find that “one thing” to do for the rest of our lives. Maybe, just maybe, it’s okay to do something completely different and change careers every 5 years. Variety and change doesn’t have to mean one doesn’t have the ability to commit or the will power to see things through. It might just mean the project is finished and it’s time for the next big thing.

God created us in His image, so we too are creative beings. Isn’t it high time we moved in more freedom in creating…and not just in creating more boxes? Life is too short to do things just to fit inside someone else’s or our own self-built boxes.

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