The Limiting Box
This box I’ve put myself into
grows smaller every day.
With each new limit I place on myself
the quarters in which I live my life
shrink.
Every time I live my life based on others’
expectations for me
my box becomes more confining.
Each judgment I internatlize,
whether self-imposed or
externally rendered,
the more my movements
become restricted.
And when I measure myself,
my life,
my purpose in this world,
by someone else’s standards,
I erase the windows
on my soul’s dwelling
that allow in the light of possibility.
This box leaves me feeling cramped,
claustrophobic and numb.
I feel entombed in a place
of my own making,
in the very place I constructed
to keep me feeling
safe, protected and secure.
This is not living.
When I am quiet,
I hear a voice calling to me.
It is a distant yearning
buried deep within me
that longs to be heard.
When I listen,
it asks me to leave this box,
that keeps my world so small,
that limits me from
fully living my life.
“Knock down the walls,”
the inner voice urges
“They have held you caged for too long!”
“They have held you too tightly in their grasp!”
“They have constrained your living
to a few safe, controlled paths.”
“It is time!”
I know that I must find a way
with a motivation that is birthed
from within,
to break free of this box,
this cage of my own creation.
So that I can embrace life
as intended
with limitless potential
and awash in possibilities.
So that one day I can raise my arms
stretched high above my head
and touch the open light.
Fully conscious of how that feels
and of the gift that it is
to taste freedom.
So that one day I can shout
from the core of my being
with conviction and joy
“This is my life!”
“I am here now!”
And it will be in that moment,
that I will see beyond the horizon,
to the place
where new dreams are born,
because the limits are gone.
I have stepped outside of the box.
— Susan MacCaul Siegmund, Copyright 2004
06.8.2012 
