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Shall we open that box?

Opinion & Analysis
There’s a box under your bed that remains unopened.

There’s a box under your bed that remains unopened. Or maybe you don’t keep yours under the bed; maybe you keep it at the back of a drawer, or high up above the closet, where you store suitcases and travelling bags. Some people keep theirs in an old handbag, or even a pot that no one cooks with. Most people have one — some have several.

Report by Thembe Khumalo

Of course, these boxes are mostly metaphoric, not real physical structures, but emotional and psychological containers filled with things we don’t want to deal with. Perhaps your box is labelled “grief” and contains a loss that you have yet to come to terms with. The box remains closed as you busy yourself with the business of living, and you are sure that the adage “time heals all” will be true for you some day. I read somewhere once that it’s not, in fact, time that heals – it’s what you do with that time.

Perhaps your box is labelled “anger”. You operate like a tightly coiled spring, barely managing to keep the lid down on the explosive contents of your box. No one is sure what will trigger the eruption and even you are afraid of the end result.

You probably know a couple of people whose boxes are marked “pain” and who have lost perspective on various aspects of their lives because the boxes obscure their vision. If the boxes, full of unresolved hurts, were opened and the contents dealt with, then perhaps the owners of those boxes might find that they see the world in a whole new way. It’s amazing how the view changes when you are no longer looking through a dirty window.

The boxes we hold, or own or keep hidden deep in our psyches, do not only belong to individuals, but sometimes whole communities and even nations. In some families, there are some things that are never talked about because they belong inside some of those tightly-sealed boxes. The children grow up knowing that there are special spaces they cannot enter, and sometimes even the children’s children come to learn the same lessons. Sometimes the boxes are related to spiritual beliefs; other times they are political or tribal.

Zimbabwe as a nation has a number of these boxes; the difference I suppose is that every so often someone does attempt to lift the lid on a box — but just as soon as it’s lifted, the lid is replaced again. Many are watching with interest to see if phenomena such as Baba Jukwa and Wikileaks ever succeed at keeping boxes open up until such a point that a nation is ready to deal with their contents.

Often the reason people don’t want to open their special boxes is because they are afraid of conflict. They will have to address something with someone and they are worried that things could get ugly. In cases like this, it’s important to remember that fighting can be very healthy. We only fight with people we care about because we want things to be better. When we stop loving someone completely and lose interest, then we just stop trying, and that is so much worse than any conflict.

Sometimes the box remains closed because everyone is hoping someone else is going to deal with it. There is a wonderful gospel song that says, “Everybody said that somebody should do the important things that nobody did do; everybody knows that anybody could do all the good things that nobody did!” Change starts with you — the one who recognises that change is required and is bought into the process.

In Greek mythology, the story is told of beautiful Pandora who was sent to earth and married off to one brother as a means of destroying another. At this point the earth was only good and no evil existed.

Pandora was given a locked box and instructed never to open it. Of course, nothing is more attractive than something you have been told not to look at, and curiosity eventually got the better of her. She opened the box and out flew every kind of evil, sickness, crime, hatred and envy. Try as she might, Pandora could not catch the evils to return them to the sealed box and so the world became as we know it today — full of suffering and iniquity.

Of course, not all boxes are full of negative things. There are boxes and jars in our lives that are marked with expectation and longing, with aspiration and inspiration, with faith and belief in long-forgotten dreams. These boxes too often remain unopened; mostly because we fear disappointment should we fail to realise our heart’s desires.

The opening of Pandora’s box begins with all manner of evil elements being released to populate the earth and make things difficult for humans. But right at the bottom of the box was one more thing that Pandora also released; and that was hope.

This story explains the richness of the human experience: that even as we deal with grief and pain and anger and strife, there is a thread of hope which runs through it all.

It is that thread which fuels our aspirations and inspires us. It is hope in a positive outcome which can give us the courage to start opening some of our individual, tribal, and national boxes.

  • Thembe Khumalo writes in her personal capacity. Readers’ comments can be sent to

[email protected].