The Glass Box

There comes a time in life when you get out of bed and find that nothing at all seems different in the world. You go about the usual activity of brushing your teeth, eating your breakfast, watching the telly like you usually do; things which you have grown both accustomed to doing and accustomed to liking (some say that the brushing of teeth has a host of hobbyists, and that they are proud owners of their very own clubhouse by Hougang). And yet, somehow something seems different.

Realisation, at this moment, doesn't quite come upon you as a falling piano would. Rather, it creeps up on you like the fall of darkness as the sun makes its ponderous journey westwards. While everything seems to be happening in a manner which things happen, you find their presence somewhat less tangible, their character less discernible, their existence less felt. Your senses grow dulled, and you pace the room in search of an answer.

Then it hits you. Quite literally in fact, for the answer is a large thin sheet of fiberglass. You scramble along it, searching for an escape, but all you find is the circumference.

This, is the Glass Box.

You throw frantic blows at the sheer face of the Box, but it yields no more than a dictator bent on conquest. Days are spent devising ways to break free--thinking out of the box, however, fails to produce a solution, for it merely proves to be but a flight of fancy, a fruitless escape for the mind. Yet, the person, the body, the soul cannot leave, for fiberglass is both man-made, and too good for man's own good.

Weeks pass, and you discover that the Box has shrunk, almost to fit your very person. Now more resembling a film of cling wrap than Plexiglas, it clings to your skin, every much as debilitating as before, save that you are now left able to interact in some manner with the rest of the world. Such is why so many believe in adaptation and evolution.

This by no means signals improvement of experience; for colours still lack their vibrancy, food forsakes its flavour, and you hold objects as one who dons heavy rubber gloves--unable to detect texture, unable to move deftly, unable to feel warmth.

You, being human, then come to the most logical of conclusions: that escalation and intensification are what is needed--that if all else fails, use a bigger bat. You consciously ramp up your efforts at achieving sensory experience in order to be moved, to feel. So you eat more, you ran farther, you dance faster, you play harder. All this in the spirit of neither hedonism nor self-destruction, but of desperation. A desperation to escape, a desperation to exist.

Some say that the Glass Box disappears with time, for man is the master of adapting and overcoming. Others maintain that the Glass Box is but a season of winter; one which arrives, chills the bones, then leaves, all part of the myriad seasons of life. Yet others believe that the Glass Box simply does not exist, and is but a construct of our own--an affliction cast upon us when we fail to see beyond our shortcomings and circumstance.

Many have devised ways to melt the castles of ice, to shatter these walls of glass. Some find inner strength, some find escapism, some find the counsel of friends, some find a life philosophy, some find religion. Nevertheless, the Glass Box will always be, for we are human. Even so, this is not to say that there is no way out, for one need not necessarily think out of the box to escape it. It, in essence, is really up to you to find your way. And in time, we all do.