What do you consider a lie?
For Youtuber Emily Wilson and her sister Gracie, not only can you be lied to by others but also by yourself. In Emily's video “The Box of LIES," Emily and Gracie discuss how we often lie to ourselves by believing things that are not true. So as a way to vent, Gracie made what she calls "The Box of Lies." Although you would expect a box, The Box of Lies can be any container (Gracie uses a large plastic jar) that you can put pieces of paper containing your lies into.
As seen in the video, Emily believes The Box of Lies has a special significance in the lives of women. We can use it in a positive way because there are a lot of lies or negative stereotypes about women that we tend to believe.
For Emily, these lies can dominate our lives sometimes by dominating our thinking and the way we operate so that we live out these lies. Personally, I have found it hard to not believe these lies because they are so ingrained in our society and culture. They are everywhere, both overtly and covertly found in things like TV and social media.
As women, we can start to claim these lies in our life and start boxing them up in order to combat them. Writing these lies down is a very concrete way to show ourselves that we recognize the lie and will no longer believe it. As we transfer the words to paper, may we likewise let those lies flow out of our minds. After collecting a box full of lies, you can do whatever you want. Feel free to keep them, throw them out, or even burn them. I am looking forward to a bonfire with my friends where we can share about and burn our box of lies together.
Just as we can struggle to not believe the lies, Emily realizes we can also struggle to believe the truth. If you’re struggling to believe the truth, Emily suggests creating "The Box of Truth" to put words of truth into. By collecting all these words of truth, they can provide a nice reminder of who we truly are. By reading through them and saying them out loud, we can internalize these truths until we really believe them for ourselves. As a woman, I hope that myself and my fellow young women can together overcome and silence the lies we face and fully embrace the truth that we are nothing less than amazing.
