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From the moment we are brought into this world we are indoctrinated into a world of fear and loathing in which those who are found to be “unworthy” are boxed away in industrialized coffins, fated to a life of never ending obstacles and opposition. However, there is a sort of supreme irony in this act of boxing others away, for in doing so, they the oppressors are in fact, walling themselves into their own box, or perhaps coffin would be a better term. Slowly, they build each wall one at a time, shielding themselves and narrowing the area from which imagined attackers might come from. This process continues, until the walls of the boxes they have placed others in become the walls of their own prison, buried beneath a flood of packaged masses, they must finish their own box or beneath their own creation.

Sadly, this wave is a threat to those who break free of their boxes as well, and thus we learn to welcome the comforting security the box offers us. Not only that, but we begin to mock those who do find the strength to leave the security of their container, treating them as fools and delinquents, we scoff at them and begin to see ourselves as beings superior to them, creating are own system of supremacy. But can we truly be blamed for this? Perhaps not, for we are not alone in the box, inside are the ideals and behaviors of those who placed us there, parasites that leech on to us and worm their way into our thoughts, eventually overpowering who we are. Perhaps we might notice this invasion, but the only hole from the box is covered with a magical screen that filters in only what the boxers wish us to see, and, not knowing any better, we believe this to be the truth, and are attention as all but enslaved to the image. It is a system that has prospered for generations, and likely will continue for many more, if not forever.

So what is the driving factor behind all this, why do we continue to repeat the same self destructing pattern, even when it seems so obvious what we are doing? The answer, more then anything else, is fear. It is a natural emotion of every living being, as well as one that is very easy to spread from one to another. We are packaged and we package others, because of fear. Whether it be physical, mental, or anything else, we fear the limitless possibilities of others, and thus the idea of confinement begins to seem not such a bad idea after all. And it, among all the wretched things within our box, is the most easily found of them all, it entirety filling up every crack and seam available. This fear consumes all things, distorting everything we encounter, feeding off the feelings of despair it generates, growing larger each time, until it becomes a colossal being of terror that surpasses anything imaginable. You could spend a lifetime trying to comprehend this fear, and you would still not even scratch the surface, and so, it is best to leave as what it is, another one of the wonders of the human mind.

But all is not as lost as it seems, if there is one comforting tale that can be used to enlighten our struggle, then perhaps that of Pandora’s box may well suit the task. As the story goes, The box contained all the evils of the world, the seven sins, and when opened, they spread forth like wildfire, infecting the people with the harsh realities of their existence. A grim tale to be certain, but there is more to it then that, at the bottom of the box, when all hope appeared lost and the people were on the brink of catastrophe, a light appeared. The light of hope.

The story goes on to say of how that ray of good healed the people and brought them back from the edge. The moral, supposedly, is that even in the darkest of times, there is always hope. While I believe there is much merit to this claim, there is something more, something that is lost in light of the more obvious implication. That box was locked away for thousands, even millions of years, as old as the gods who sealed it away. This fact is often taken as a mere piece of unimportant fictional history, but it implies a great deal to me.

That ray of hope, the embodiment of goodness in the world, was locked away with every evil of the entire world since it’s creation. But when the box was opened, and the evils fled, that ray shone as bright as ever, and overpowered the great evils. An eternity of corruption from all the sins of mankind had done nothing to damage the ray, had not even dulled it.

So take comfort, for there is a valuable lesson to be learned in these words. No matter how dark the box becomes, no matter how lost the world seems to be, the darkness of the box cannot, and never will, be able to break the shining spirit of hope. When the box was opened, the sins fled, overjoyed to be free. But they fled not out of a desire to corrupt. No, they fled out of fear, fear for the one thing they could not defeat, fear for the one thing they were powerless against. They were truly afraid, and so they boxed up that light, boxed up and sealed away the light that lays, dormant, within all humans. These were the first box makers, the original manufacturers of social hierarchy, and they are afraid.

We must all remember this, for if we loose sight of the fact that all is not lost, then we expose the singular weakness of the light, doubt. And we must not let that happen, we must never give up trying to escape the box.

Because as soon as hope is no longer enough.

There is truly none left.