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A dear friend of mine going through a divorce said in passing, “All those years little things were said and done, and I never wanted them to knock my marriage off-course. I stuffed them all in a box and ignored them. But now that I’ve opened the box, they come flying out.”

Pandora’s Box. I never thought of Pandora’s Box this way before.

From Greek mythology, the story of Pandora is the tale of the woman to whom the gods entrusted all woes destined for mankind on earth, contained within a box. Pandora opened the box and released all the evils upon earth. The only thing left inside the box was hope.

And of course, the evils on earth were all her fault. That’s the way the story goes, after all.

Yes, it always bothered me that Pandora, due to her curiosity, was the cause of all mankind’s woes. It wasn’t that different from Eve, due to her curiosity, being the cause of the expulsion from Eden. But I never turned it around and looked at it from Pandora’s point of view. Might she have been keeping those evils in a box in order to not make trouble? And when she did lift the lid, they all came pouring out?

If she had just kept doing things the untroublesome way….

It makes me think of the MeToo movement. How many women didn’t raise a stink because they wanted to keep their jobs, or their ranks, or their good ratings, or their solid marriages? Take the lid off that box and suddenly the news is full of transgressions, and they just keep coming. The women are making a lot of trouble for some powerful men.

How many Blacks didn’t call out the police because they were afraid of dying, of lynching, of danger to their families, of losing their livelihoods? All of a sudden, with video recordings documenting every transaction, there are troubles everywhere, and they just keep coming. The recordings are making a lot of trouble for some so-called law enforcers.

How many LGBTQ people kept their sexuality issues to themselves, for their safety or their jobs, or for the comfort of their families? When the lid came off that box, the genders seem to multiply, and the simple binary codification of everything from bathrooms to bicycles seems to blow up. What a lot of trouble!

I’ve let loose some trouble in my life. Fairly often, as you might see from these blogs. When it happens, I’m never happy about it and I wonder why I did it again. It’s never grand evils that plague mankind, it’s more the annoying type that just piss people off. Scaring away the geese (see 51). Walking out on my mother-in-law. Embarrassing my boss.

When I see my dear friend trying to extricate herself from a sad marriage, I see clearly that it’s not good to stuff hurts in a box, even to keep a marriage going, especially to keep a marriage going. My friend is picking up the box, tipping it over, shaking out all the troubles, and getting blamed for ending the marriage.

I am happy that she is looking for the hope lingering at the bottom of the box.