Boundaries and Freedom

You are letting loose of boundaries. Little by little, you are. It isn’t that boundaries own you, beloveds. It is that you hold on to the boundaries. It is you who own the boundaries, and it is you who keep them and keep freedom away. There is a certain ease in going along with the crowd and going along what is called mainstream for however long it lasts before mainstream changes.

How frightening is the world to you without boundaries, without rules and restrictions and some kind of imagined order. You believe with all your heart that you want to be free of infringement, yet, at the same time, you fear life without bounds. You fear you might go too deeply into the middle of the sea if there were no rope to keep you close to shore. You don’t want all those leashes to hamper you. At the same time, you don’t want to be absolutely without them. You like to protest boundaries, yet, they comfort you. At the very least, boundaries give you something to tug against or to rail against. They are very real to you, these boundaries, the idea that you can go here and not there, or only this far, and not farther. You may want to come off the assembly line, and yet you may not want to diverge from it very much or at all.

What if you are really responsible for your own life, and there isn’t anything to keep you in tow? It’s possible that you like being a rebel for the sake of it yet not in actuality.

Ultimately, you are the own decider of your life. One way or another, you are. You may think you are safer within boundaries. Boundaries may be forced on you, and so you learn what is worth fighting and what is not or how to fight or just get past the boundaries. Boundaries or no boundaries, you are your own decision-maker, even when you blame your decisions on something outside you.

Look, if you are in prison, you are in prison, and you can’t just walk out. This lack of freedom is imposed upon you, and yet, if you find yourself there, you are there. Even if you are falsely imprisoned, even if imprisonment is foisted on you, you are there. Physical restrictions are restrictions whether you merit them or not. In one sense, there can be freedom within restrictions. Regardless, you have the freedom to deal with what is imposed upon you as you do choose.

You like the idea of being responsible for yourself, yet the reality of free choice isn’t always hunky-dory with you.

What it comes down to is: How do you come to terms with life as it comes before you? How do you make peace with life or go at it, kicking and screaming, even if you keep your protest within you, silent and unseen.

How as a child you yearned for the day you could do anything you wanted when you wanted, and yet, somehow, that day has never come. Did you turn away from this day or not even notice it? What context do you put your life in? Do you give yourself the illusion of freedom? What are you doing with your life? And what do you make of it?

Whatever you make of your life, however you view it, you act on it the way you see it. Or you go along with life the way others or even everyone else seems to.

Sometimes it seems to you that life is a passing fancy. That is pretty close to the truth of it, beloveds. Life is a passing fancy.