WPC: Boundaries

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This week’s photo challenge topic is “Boundaries.” 

I’ve been thinking, today,about the many different sorts of boundaries which tailor our lives, and realized that while some of them might be as obvious as a fence, most exist mainly in our mind.  What stands between us and touching this bird, beyond our perception of boundaries?

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A lot of what passes for education and ‘home training’ is mostly about teaching us which boundaries to respect and how to comfortably live within them.

How often did you hear, growing up, “We just don’t do that,” or “Nice people just don’t say those things”?

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And so as surely as we learn to color within the lines of a coloring book, we learn to live our lives within the agreed upon boundaries of what is polite and proper; and ‘legal’.

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And of course, many of our mental boundaries are there to keep us safe in some way.    Untold dangers might lurk where we step across the boundaries into new experiences and new ways of living in our world.

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Just as our education is about learning to stay within certain boundaries, maturation is about learning how our lives change as we move beyond them.

We figure out which boundaries we need to respect and which we can survive when we cross.

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How have your own boundaries shifted, and enlarged, through the decades of your life?  What once firm  boundaries have we transcended with the creative application of technology?

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Creative spirits often see boundaries as permeable challenges.  How can we move beyond the seeming limitations of our lives?  What gizmo will allow us to explore places and experiences which once seemed ‘Out of Bounds”?

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Sometimes boundaries prove temporary.    Just as the high tide line moves up and down the beach with the season and the weather, so, too may our personal boundaries shift.

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Sometimes we want to harden the protective boundaries we put around ourselves, to keep others at a distance.

And then there are those magical moments when the boundaries shift, when we find we have made a bridge between our life, and another’s.

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I like that boundaries begin to fall away with age.

We have less fear, and more confidence to move beyond some of those boundaries which once locked us into a narrow way of being and thinking.

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As our fears evaporate, our path widens.  We understand how everything is connected together.  We begin to perceive a wider world where the boundaries blur and fade.

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Woodland Gnome 2015

For the Daily Post’s

Weekly Photo Challenge: Boundaries

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About woodlandgnome

Lifelong teacher and gardener.

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