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Today's
Meditation:
I've always
been too good at creating and maintaining boundaries in my
life. When I was younger, they were walls that kept
virtually everyone out; as I've grown older, I've been
able to scale them back so that they're no longer damaging
walls, but protective boundaries between me and my
students (very important) and between me and the rest of
the world. I was just talking to a colleague
yesterday who's already exhausted because, as she said,
"I don't know how to say no." That's the
kind of thing that can be very damaging to our psyches,
our spirits, and even our health.
If we
don't establish and maintain boundaries, we run the risk
of turning our lives into a never-ending parade (or
charade) of pleasing others. Doing work for
others. Taking care of others and their
problems. We can find ourselves with almost no
privacy, no quiet moments, no opportunities for rest and
relaxation and rejuvenation.
And
as Robert says, boundaries aren't just about what we do
for others-- they're about what we'll accept from others,
how we allow them to treat us. Too many of us allow
others to be rude and mean to us because we're afraid
we'll lose them in our lives, or because we're afraid that
we'll hurt them-- or because we're afraid that they'll hurt
us. Sometimes situations become unbearable precisely
because we haven't set any boundaries, because we've
allowed others to do and say as they please when they're
with us.
Boundaries
need to be set, though. And they need to be adhered
to, within reason (if we establish unreasonable
boundaries, we face other problems with frustration,
anger, etc., when they're not respected). We need to
make sure that we know what our limits are and that other
people in our lives respect those limits. We need to
do this to take care of ourselves, and to be very clear to
others just what we'll stand and just what we won't.
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