What's In the Box? - Writer's group for June

**This short piece, admittedly a bit more venting, is also our topic assignment for our writer's group from the phrase:  'What's in the box……….'   Not a particularly cheery piece. Other group members had us smiling and laughing!

What's In the Box?

So. What’s in the box? The box that holds my heart and soul? The box made up of rules and regulations created to foster the bottom line of dollars and cents where there seems to be no sense at all?  The box seems to get smaller, tighter and more sealed off everyday until, my beliefs begin to wink out, like candles caught with no oxygen to feed an ever weakening flame. 

What is in the box of habit and routine? Defensive, protective behaviours we each have created to be able to survive each system we work in, and those we live in.  It takes me back many years to earlier choices I have made. Choices I have made to leave bad situations and to be happy despite the many bumps on that journey. Today, however, I prefer to look differently, and with awareness, at my present situation and decide to stay within in it. To decide to be happy with my place and my voice. Accepting the things I cannot change has always been difficult for me when I have seen changes that seem so obvious to me. Changes that should be based on logic, common sense and compassion.

I did not come into nursing for dollars and cents. After all I was still a teenager at 17-going on-18 years of age. I’m 68 now, going on 69. Dollars and cents are necessary. Necessary for any of us to exist and to live on. The art, science and spirit of nursing is still what I believe in despite any monetary needs.

What is in the box? The box of schedules, rules and regulations…..and the bottom line? Each box nests within the other, squeezing the humanity out of society’s awareness of what is right. The humanity that has been stuffed inside, and willingly, so we can live with our dollars and cents. Too often we each forget that our beliefs, our common sense and our logic are not to be ignored.

“Without work, all life goes rotten, but when 

work is soulless, life stifles and dies.”

~ Albert Camus