Benched Week 89: thinking inside the box

I had been scribing for only a short time in my event this week when a familiar phrase popped up. “We need to think outside the box,” a participant reminded the large crowd. A little later, someone else suggested getting rid of the box altogether. Still later, another challenged everyone to “stand on the box!”

All the while, I was intently fixated on staying inside mine.

For this event, I had given myself the challenge of capturing content in “justified” columns – where all the lines ended at the same length, creating rectangles of words. Like articles in a newspaper.

It relied on intuition. I had to guess how large to make the initial letter of each line so that the words wouldn’t exceed my lightly ruled pencil box at the end. I didn’t do it perfectly, but close enough to make me happy.

Though there was no reason to add an extra layer of difficulty, I suppose I wanted to flex my typographical muscles a bit. Which is why, when I went looking for a bench in the expansive atrium of the resort later, I had to choose the one under the screen that called me out.

I had wanted to see what I could do in a confined space. Not unlike the Gaylord Palms hotel.

 

Granted, it had a much bigger space to work with. Under a high, glass dome, the hotel creators had fashioned an elaborate green space, replete with waterfalls...

...fake stone walls....

...even alligators.

It had as much authenticity as a fall pumpkin display in sunny Orlando, but I had to admire the creative effort. They almost transformed the inside of their box to feel like the outside.

We all have boxes. Some we create. Some are dictated to us. The question is: what can we do within them? One woman I talked with at the event told me how the first teacher to recognize her dyslexia told her she “had been given a great gift – a way of seeing things differently.” It’s the same perspective Malcolm Gladwell brings to dyslexia in his book David and Goliath. That teacher’s words (and the lifelong relationship they started) transformed the girl’s mental box as vibrantly as the gardens did the atrium. And a whole lot more authentically.

As the woman shared with me, I noticed her fingernails. There, in the smallest of canvases, an artist had found space to be creative.

Ultimately it’s not the size of the box that matters. It’s what we’re driven to do within that space.