It is impossible to put people in boxes because they are much more than we assume.

I’m “the crazy” of the boxes. I collect several types, I love it when I discover new models and I rarely get rid of any. My boxes already come into the house with a career plan: from time to time I change them from shelf, closet or room, giving them new functions. And so I organize home and life, separating objects and subjects into distinct categories.

If for you this refers to a military routine, it may be that you are giving the boxes a wrong use. They are for storing objects, not people. My need to order my surroundings serves to make room for essential disorders, such as loud music while I wash the dishes, the mess of cats in the living room, an unexpected invitation to dinner. I organize my life into boxes, but I refuse to go inside them. Although I know the world insists on trying to do this to us.

The success box, the failure box; the fat ones, the thin ones; of men or women. Homo and heteroaffective, left and right, black and white. The world reserves the same box for anyone with a tattoo, piercing or plug. Another for sportsmen; a different one for sedentary people. Old on one side, young on the other. Vegans above, carnivores below. What box do we keep those who live by putting us in boxes?

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There is only one more serious attitude: when we ourselves try to fit in. On behalf of a group to which I believe I belong, I impoverish my differences, hide peculiarities and no longer recognize myself. I shrink wills, I respond to calls that are not for me. And I see myself so limited that I lose the best of me, deconstructing my list of well-matched inconsistencies.

It’s impossible to put people in boxes because they are much more than we assume. I know women who are tattooed, full of children and married for decades. And gay evangelicals, rockers who love the sertanejo, chronically ill-tempered people who are also fools on duty. To box affections and people is to lose the best of them. In the same way, trying to fit into certain profiles is to refuse the gift of self-knowledge.

To corroborate the logic of the little boxes, we are addicted to building illusions on social networks. And then, in reality, we become victims of the same resource, as if we changed roles. A stroll through Instagram is all it takes to believe again in the positive bank balances and negative bellies that parade in front of me.

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On this side of the screen, I glimpse my image at rock bottom, crippled. And I keep dividing the world into good and evil, black and white. I miss midtones. Reading the newspaper, a book or a post should not serve to perpetuate boxing, but to deconstruct, confront, activate the ferment that makes it grow and come out of the shell.

Fan of a box like me, Japanese Marie Kondo created an organization method that prioritizes disposal. It guides us to choose not the pieces to be discarded, but the ones that will remain. The question to ask yourself is: “Does this make me happy?”. Her philosophy is symbolic and transformative because it can be extended to life. This periodic review of career, friends, affective relationships and choices is welcome. What is worth keeping, what asks for detachment?

It’s time to discard limited ways of seeing things. Time to demolish this imaginary framework that hides what gets out of control and to understand that being people is unbeatable. Life is too good to be eaten in pieces. In this world filled with empty models, the truth has transformative power. There is nothing that displaces it.

Chris Guerra is the author of For Francisco (BestSeller), Intuitive Fashion (Planet), I was looking for love in Cactus Gardens (Gulliver), Mother (Miguilim) and, with Leila Ferreira, Que Nobody Listen to Us, (Planet)

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