Boundaries

The image above is a kaleidoscope made from a photograph. The photo was one shared on Facebook by Marilyn B. I was fascinated by the colors.

This is the original photograph. I have spent a part of each day, for the past week, cleaning up files, both here in my office, and on my computer. Making a path for myself through those foothills I mentioned in my last two posts. I reward myself for this ‘cleaning’ with a movie on Netflix. However, the last three movies I’ve chosen to watch have been about time travel into other dimensions, Sci Fi films. Not my usual fare, but interesting, none the less. Each one sort of centered around crossing boundaries and the consequences of doing so. And many of the consequences were negative, even destructive. I began to wonder why I was making the choices that found me watching them at all. Was I trying to widen my own boundaries, or to set new ones in place?

Boundaries are sometimes rather strange things. We set personal boundaries hoping to keep ourselves safe and comfortable. These are the lines we choose not to cross because we decide it isn’t safe to do so, for the reason that it might harm others, or ourselves. But, often those lines get altered as we live our lives and find that others might work better. We create a personal space that we guard and defend from others who might not be aware of such restrictions. And when those boundaries are crossed we feel threatened and the feeling is one of fear.

We are now living in a world where boundaries are being crossed everyday, or so it seems. Some of them are personal, others are political, while others are geographical. And yes, we feel threatened and fear what each new day will bring. Some, who can not tolerate that feeling of ongoing fear are lashing out, hurting others they think might be responsible, or assuming they are simply taking the next logical steps to ensure a return to safety. My question would be, is it even possible to find that sense of safety now that it has been breached? And my answer to that question? I really don’t know.

What I do know is that I have no desire to hurt or harm anyone. Yet, my world has been altered in so many ways, and so swiftly, that I have to stop and collect myself, think before I act in response to only my feelings. The number one means, for me, to do that is to get involved in images, drawing and playing with colors and photos. That activity always settles me down, allows me to breathe more slowly, thus allows me to think. The funny part of that, is when I put a photo into the kaleidoscope app, I am breaching the boundaries set within the photo, altering it, creating new boundaries and creating a new and unknown landscape for different aspects of that image. But no one is harmed by what I am doing. And the beauty of the created image is sort of like magic. Which means I will continue to do it as long as I am able.

I have long believed that creativity, in any form, is a healing agent built into the human psyche. We all carry that healing agent within us. It can and does, take a thousand different forms, if we allow it. And we most desperately need to allow that now, in our current situation. We need to learn new ways to deal with our altered reality. We need to give our world its best chance to grow, and to heal. And how we proceed must be both creative and with positive thought processes. If we take a few minutes, each day, to slow down our reactive emotional states, we have the ability to allow ourselves to breathe and to think. More importantly, we give ourselves the means to find a positive way to create new and better boundaries, rather than just accepting those set by unknown others, who don’t have our best interests in mind.

What do you do to get away from all the fear and distress in the present moment?

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