Boundary Lines

It’s the one message that we’ve heard over and over in so many ways: Stay inside. Shelter in place. Quarantine. Self-isolate. In essence: Stay within the boundaries of your home.

Staying home, however, doesn’t mean having nothing to do for many of us. Staying home, in fact, has brought with it an enormous workload, both physical and emotional. From cleaning constantly used spaces to preparing meals. From supervising school work to taking work calls. From preserving our children’s sense of security to committing financial concerns to fervent prayer. The list is overwhelming.

This is not a complaint. This is a fact.

And whereas the mandate is to stay within the boundaries of your home, I wonder whether this advice should be construed as more than literal.

Once our lockdown began, it didn’t take long to realise that with increased demands on the homefront I would have to put limits on what I could and could no longer do otherwise. Staying within the boundaries of my home necessarily meant that I had to set boundaries for everything else.

Even simple tasks for work have become overwhelming to complete. And it’s not the work itself. It’s the interruptions. It’s the housework. It’s the meal prep. It’s the helping with schoolwork. It’s all of these things happening at the same time.

And so I’ve had to revisit that word.

That word that feels so heavy until it is uttered and then it sprouts wings and brings buoyancy to my spirit. That word that is encumbered by obligation but grants immense freedom. That word that instills panic even before it is on my lips but has never failed to immerse me in peace once it is spoken.

That word is ‘no’.

If you’re like me, this word doesn’t roll off the tongue naturally…unless it’s to say ‘no problem’…which essentially means ‘yes’.

Although I’ve been slowly learning the art of saying ‘no’, this lockdown has been somewhat of a crash course. From the very outset, it became clear that, whilst staying safely at home, there was a lot of work to be done. Work that ordinarily never needed to be done all at the same time. And so, setting boundaries with the rest of the world as to what I will and will not do has become essential to my well-being and that of every member of my household.

Believe it or not, even our kids have started to set limits as to what online activities and invitations they will accept. And once they feel as though they’ve had enough impersonal contact, we let them step away as needed.

To be honest, I had deliberated whether to share this. I thought that perhaps most everyone else had found a balance over the course of the last two months and was somehow flitting with ease between tasks. Stirring pots while supervising classes. Folding laundry while emailing clients. Being present while handling it all.

Then I had a chat with one of my closest friends. What she shared with me made me realise that I’m not alone. And I wonder if you need to hear that too?

I wonder if you need to hear that you’re not the only one who is overwhelmed.

That you’re not the only one who feels stretched thin.

That you’re not the only one who feels as if no matter how hard you try or how much you manage to get done, it never feels as though you’ve done enough.

That your kids aren’t the only ones who are tired of socialising by screen.

What if we all set those boundaries. What if we all learned to say ‘no’.
Not to everything. But to some things.
Not forever. But for a time.
For this time.
This time that is so unprecedented.
This time that is so uncertain.

What if we realised that the boundaries that we fix don’t need to be cemented in order to be real.

What if we acknowledged that saying no to something today doesn’t bar us from saying yes to it tomorrow. Just as the boundaries to my home have points of access – points through which I can step outside – the boundaries that we set can be opened or closed from time to time and at any time. As wide or as narrow as we deem fit.

What if we stayed within those boundaries and we didn’t feel guilty about it.

What if we realised that our worth has never been tied to how much we do.

What if we ignored the critic within that preaches more productivity and embraced the concept of enough.

What if we said ‘no’.

And then, what if we realised that by saying ‘no’ to some things, we have simultaneously said ‘yes’.

‘Yes’ to peace.
‘Yes’ to space.
‘Yes’ to connection.
‘Yes’ to clarity.
‘Yes’ to ourselves.

Set those boundaries. And then stay inside.