imagine you are placed into a black box. you aren’t aware of your environment, and your eyes are subconsciously shut; you don’t realize that your pupils are sheltered because it is too dark inside of the box for you to even notice. you aren’t afraid, nor are you uneasy. you feel as if you belong there because the walls, although made of an onyx that you can’t experience, are radiating with warmth. you somehow become flexible, able to fit perfectly into the six walls that surround you. the box never moves, and you never move in it. instead, your form becomes a shadow of the minds that exist around you; what people think of you is what determines your appearance. The walls of the box are opaque and it would take only your vision to see what you really look like inside. however, given your permanent state of entrapment inside the box, you are unable to see yourself. people picture what you must be like all the time, and you change your form with each proceeding thought. you may bend over backwards; you may flip head over heels, remaining stationary for as long as a thought exists.
one day, when the truth arrives, you will realize that your eyes are indeed shut. you will realize that you have a stiffening joint somewhere in your body, although you will not be able to place its exact location because the stiffening, in fact, lies deep in your soul. you will suddenly be aware of your senses, and the warm walls of the solid box that houses you will suddenly become cold, filling your space with a thin coat of ice. you will then become afraid and will feel uneasy in your skin, wondering how you will free yourself from this box that had decided to enclose you within its walls without your permission. you search with eyes that are now open and sore from the brightness of the truth that consumes you, looking for some sort of hinge that would suggest where the opening of the box is. you can’t find one, and it is then that you realize that the box has no opening, almost as if it was formed with you inside of it. you can’t even tell that you are the size of a marble, stuck in a box no bigger than dice rolled in the dirty hands of gamblers and greedy men. your existence has been diminished. what’s worse is that you have become this way because you allowed yourself to. you think hard, trying to collect the thousands of opinions and thoughts that have escaped you but are still floating in the condensed air surrounding you. you catch them, one by one, regaining your conscience and reforming the backbone that, in its absence, allowed you to be so flexible to the wants and opinions of others. slowly, you acknowledge your submission to what’s around you and you, in all your anger, melt the ice that has stained the box’s inner walls. you remember your personality, your outspokenness, your fervor for life and undying belief in yourself, a belief that somehow became diluted in the salty presence of weak minds that simply envied your greatness. as a result, the onyx walls glisten in the glare of your pupils, becoming mirrors that reflect, for once, your true form, as you grow into your perfect and deserving shape. you remember your beauty, your brilliance, your self, and these mirrors slowly start to shatter, allowing you to break out of the box and regain your existence.

you have reclaimed your definition. you interpret yourself, not the unyielding stains of others. you are magnificent. and your boxability no longer exists.