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| Four quadrilaterals. |
Motivational statements are often boilerplate because of the fact that it is playing to a public audience filled with average people. However, let's consider how we can place this into a larger frame of understanding which provides even more practical applications. Let us consider an analogy by way of the infamous and often annoying phrase, "thinking outside the box".
Most people are content to live "
inside the box" even though they hear people say that it's great to "live
outside the box". They do not care much for it and they are fully happy without inquiring further. This is not only fine, but our very civilization depends on them.
For
those who want to achieve "more" (whatever that means), they are looking for an impetus to "live
outside the box". These are the ones that subscribe to internet publications of motivational quotes and phrases.
But you and I have been there; we've been inside and we've been outside and we don't see anything new. So we go a step further and ask more questions:
- What is the box?
- Why is it good to be outside of it?
- Why do people suggest that we be outside of it?
- Who defines the box?
- Why does there even need to be a box?
Eventually we come to a conclusion that we can live our lives with the utmost freedom and direction by amorphously and dynamically defining our box and contemporaneously living outside and inside of it. But we also have to realize that we are not always one and complete. We are not isotropic pieces of meat and ideas which adhere to a single frame of mind.
We are the child, the hero, and the sage all in one. And that's why the motivational slogans are important. It reminds the more child-like sides of ourselves to catch up and be earnest to go through the stages I've outlined above. Perhaps this is the realization that we all seek to reach, but even I find it extremely difficult. But that's what life is about,
the struggle.
