On Sandboxes

I’m thinking about sandboxes and my proclivity toward needing to push the boundaries, color outside the lines, break the rules because they need to be broken.  I suppose this is the Aquarian in me.  I had kids before I went to college.  Married men from other cultures, one so he could stay in the country, the other who became a citizen.  I lived outside the United States and my view of the world exploded.  I left marriages that weren’t making me happy and thrived.  I blurred lines between friendship and clients.  That seems to be an important part of who I am.  And with that comes a certain amount of loneliness.  And stress.  And danger.  And messiness.  And inconvenience.  But it also deepened and enriched my life because coloring inside the lines is boring.  Boundaries are confining and some rules just are just screaming to be tested, massaged, stretched–if not broken.

Society makes rules to keep people safe and under control.  Families develop systems so they can function smoothly; people, often as children, make rules in their minds just so they can survive.  

I will never ever ever be a burden to you, mommy. 

Or 

I will never betray you like Daddy did.

Then later, 

I will withhold my sexuality because it is the cause of betrayal and violation.  

So at some point, we try expanding the sandbox, expanding the borders of the mind, expanding the perception of reality when our families and society do things that are not good for us, and we decide that we need something more because none of it actually makes any sense to us, we need to find another way.  Another compass.

I married young because of a promise I made not to be a burden to my family and because for a million reasons I needed to make distance from my family and start my own life.  But, made in haste, that life did not sustain me, and so greater forces propelled me toward resonance, reevaluation, and a whole lot of self examination.  I still don’t like being a burden on the people to whom I belong, but thank the Goddess, that’s not the driving force in my life any longer.

Life taught me that I would have to make my own rules, and they would need to align with what worked for me.  The rules that ultimately fit would have to do with integrity and congruence.  Not the logical variety, but the felt sense of rightness.  Trueness.  And just so you’re not too worried about me, I necessarily have a pragmatic respect for the law, breaking it in ways, as I’m sure you do too, that have not gotten us into too much trouble.  Driving 5 miles over the speed limit doesn’t register on my conscience in the slightest.  Broken promises to husbands still feel sad, but these I left only after the tender matrix of our union was obliterated beyond repair and I felt I had no other choice but to leave or self emmolate.  Once we’ve learned the hard way that the rules weren’t actually made for us, specifically, we learn that some of them are not even hard and fast rules at all, but rather our own ignorance that needs to be examined and updated.

Somehow, over the decades I’ve learned that the rules give us guidelines to start from.  They are a starting point.  But for some of us at least, playing outside those safe limits is where we do our best work and in fact where the work needs to be done.  The rules and principles are there to serve us as long as they are.  When they no longer serve, we have to grow and make new ones that work, and be willing to continue to change as long as we live, and that’s okay with me.  

Brothers and sisters, we are big kids now.  Our leaders tout their immunity to the rules which makes us cringe with fear of being like them.  But in all seriousness, I ask you to consider: Is playing inside the sandbox actually working for you?