Shoe Box Heart

I'm at a turning point in my life, and it's made me think about my "shoe box heart". I've never addressed it before, so here goes...

... a shoe box is something that's made to look good. It has to, in a way, sell shoes. Or at least give a certain impression of the company that's selling the shoes. But it's not the shoes, it's just the container that they're shipped in. It's a package. It's a way of keeping things organized.

But a shoe box has to have a certain strength to it. It has to be built well enough that it can handle being moved about. It needs a certain amount of strength. And, as mentioned, a certain amount of looks. It needs to be strong enough for a temporary usage.

But it's just a box. It gets filled with one thing, and then taken home and emptied, and then filled with another thing (or just thrown in the trash - my heart has been wrecked more than once!). It's a kind of temporary vessel that can get passed around. Or, it gets filled and put away, pushed into the back of a dark closet, or under a dusty bed. It's a temporary thing, but it can also be a very long-standing thing.

I guess the idea is that it's nothing special. It can be one thing, or it can be another. It can be trash, or it can be useful. But it's never anything really of value. It's just a shoe box - yet the box sometimes outlasts the shoes.

So I don't know exactly what I'm even saying here except that my heart is a transient vehicle. It plays host to certain parties, and it's filled with junk, or emptied of junk (depending on the day), and passed around or put away. It's not anchored like some dense urn full of ashes on a mantle, or some thick steeled safe in the basement. But at times I want it to be solid. I want it to be rigid and focused and something of importance. But I also know it cannot be. And that is why I have a 'shoe box heart'.