The problem with boxes

There is chaos all around us at all times.  We see the elements of millions of lives scrape past us unpredictably as we go about our day.
To cope with this chaos, we tie up our time in tidy boxes of routines and habits.  We train ourselves to see the same sequence of events day after day, even as the landscape of faces on the subway changes in the passage of a moment.  Every day I take the same train, think variations of the same thoughts on the train and at work, and have the same lukewarm conversations with the same people... It goes on and on, to the point where I am fairly certain I can predict my day to a high degree of accuracy before I have even left my bed.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing.  Imagine every single action you take in a day. If you had to think about each one and decide when to do it, you would be paralyzed by the sheer enormity of the task.  Our brains developed so we could be more efficient in our lives, producing more without expanding too much energy.
Yet there may be a danger lurking in these boxes.    The corners we cut, without any acknowledgement, could hold possibilities beyond the imagination.  Are we giving up something profound by accepting humdrum?  Are we numb to the possibilities that could be held in that one smile?  Making a change, even the tiniest, seemingly invisible change can be scary, without a doubt.  The choice to look up, make eye contact and smile at whoever you pass.  The decision to think a kind thought about someone you normally hold in the shadows.  Choosing gratitude when you would normally ask for more.
The boxes we use to organize the closets of our minds might need dusted.  It just may be worth the effort to go through and look inside at the content, and not only the labels.