Those of us who are old enough to remember the comedian Flip Wilson know that his most famous line is “The devil made me do it”. This is very much how many people lead their lives.
Having good boundaries not only means that you know who you are, but you know that you have full control of the choices you make. When I was raising my kids, it was common for them to get locked into one course of action. The want what they want when they want it. They think that it just has to be done this way, and right now, or the world as they know it will end. This just isn’t the case. In my experience the sun has always come up in the morning no matter what has happened the day before.
When we own up to the choices we make without excuse, we are showing that we know exactly who we are because we know where the boundaries are laid. We know who we are, and even if we can’t explain exactly why we may have done it, we freely own the fact that we have done something.
When we love somebody, we love their boundaries. We don’t make choices for others, and we don’t make excuses for others. We don’t enable others to deny their selves, or to live in a world without boundaries.
There are two basic problems we have with boundaries. People who are weaker willed who freely allow others to walk right in and take control, and there are those who don’t recognize boundaries and feel free to move right in on others. We must strive to live our lives with strong boundaries protecting ourselves, and respecting the boundaries of others even when they may not be projecting any.