I once heard an explanation of the term "mid-life crises" to be that a man grows up being taught by society that happiness is gained through fame and fortune. So, he spends the first part of his career working hard with the mindset "He who dies with the most toys, wins." Over time, he begins to achieve this success but is unhappy, somehow still unfulfilled. Then, one day around the age of 40, he wakes up and realizes: "He who dies with the most toys . . . is DEAD." He suddenly perceives that in the long run his success amounts to nothing. That which he was striving for, was the wrong goal. Values suddenly shift. He realizes that all the underlying philosophies that he has build his world upon don't work. But modern culture does not offer any other viewpoint. Thus he begins a soul search for answers, a meaning for his life. Hence, the crises in the Middle of his life.

Now, since our culture is telling us one answer that doesn't work, we won't find the answer if we keep thinking like our culture has taught us. We have to learn to think differently, to see things differently. To think "outside the box" means to see a problem or situation from a different perspective and come up with a new way to deal with it.

One example of this concept of "thinking outside the box" is the story of the job application that asked this question: Imagine that you just bought the brand new two-seater convertible you have always wanted. On the way home from the dealership you pull up to a corner next to a bus stop. At the bus stop you see your childhood best friend whom you haven't seen in years and have meant to go see many times in the last few months but couldn't. You also see the woman of your dreams. Your heart skips a beat as time stands still and you fall instantly in love. At the bus stop is also an elderly woman, sick and weak, coughing pathetically, waiting for the bus to take her to the hospital before she collapses. You look up and see that it is about to pour down rain. A REALLY bad storm is about to hit. There is only room in the car for one other person. Which one do you offer a ride to, and why?

The story goes on to tell that after reading hundreds of applications explaining why they would offer the ride to their friend, the elderly lady, or the woman of their dreams, they came to one, stopped, and didn't look at another application. The man they immediately hired had simply wrote that he would get out of the car, have his best friend drive the elderly lady to the hospital, and wait in the rain for the bus with the woman of his dreams. This man had thought outside the box to come up with a better answer.

Sometimes to think counter-culture is to merely recognize the often overlooked, simple, obvious answer. In the movie "Roxanne", Steve Martin plays a Cyrano D'Bergerac character, C.D. Bales. His best friend sees that C.D. is obviously in love, even though C.D. cannot, so the friend asks the riddle: "What can you sit on, sleep on, and brush your teeth with?" When C.D. is unable to answer the question, the friend responds "A chair, a bed, and a toothbrush. Sometimes answer is as plain as the nose on your face. You're in love with her." We so often miss the obvious answers that are right before us. Every child know the joke "Why did the chicken cross the road?" Why is the joke funny? Because the answer isn't a joke or a trick that everyone is expecting. It's the obvious reason that nobody thinks of because we are trained to look for a trick or a joke answer.

Maybe we can't find the answers because we're looking too hard. Can't see the forest because of all the trees in the way? Here are a some links to help exercise brains and help break our minds out of the box.

Ramblings on why the chicken crossed the road