SYTB 14: Defining Boundaries

Looking at personal boundaries versus borders.

Today, we are going to look closer at the distinction between what we are talking about when we define our boundaries versus what seems to be more of an arbitrary border.

In my book, “Autobiography Of a Nobody: From Floundering to Freedom” I started fleshing out these two distinct concepts noticing how my budding anarchism enhanced my sense of boundaries. In Chapter 3, I wrote.

It’s funny that when I became personally accountable for my boundaries, I became clear on how this principle applied equally to physical borders and boundaries. As my priorities aligned with integrity, my philosophical stance aligned as well.

You can see how the core values exercise works in practice.

I could see how concepts of personal property and self-ownership applied universally. If people build a wall around themselves as a collective group of potential victims, a wall which the individuals don’t hold the key, the wall blocks, traps and infringes on the individuals. It necessarily becomes an impediment. If one must beg permission from the key holder whenever one wishes to move about, it’s not a personal boundary. It’s a prison.

Words of wisdom from experience: care enough about your autonomy to not unconsciously subscribe to a collective who could turn your life into a prison. This applies just as equally to family, as it does to government, as it does to any identity class or a religion.

And then, I draw some examples.

If you still don’t see the difference between personal boundaries and a collectivist notion of borders, you might have to focus more on developing personal boundaries. Strong personal boundaries ensure the opportunity for people you deem ideal to come to your shop, voluntarily exchange goods and services based on your mutual agreements and arrive only during your chosen hours of business.

All of the focus here is on your ideal people, mutual respect and honoring agreements. This is about creating a vision of harmony for your life and staying focused on those terms. You thrive within them. Read that last quoted paragraph again. What part of it is focused on outsiders, who you need to ward off or avoid? I keep hammering at this. Good boundaries do not require a strong “no” energy. They require only a clear focus on what you do want. That in itself filters out the riff-raff. Set up your terms and say, “yes” to them all day long.

Replacing good boundaries with collectivist ideologies and walls ensures that you will be unobjectively discriminating against customers, good or bad based on arbitrary terms (often set by others) which will never account for individuality. This allows the collective, and not you, to determine their idea of “good customers” who make agreements on how they will work with you as decided by the collective which may not work for you as an individual.

I wrote that in 2018. It perfectly describes during the pandemic how cities, counties and states pushed by people with their own set of ideals imposed restrictions on individuals and business owners on how they could do business, if they could do business, what customers they could see, in some places what hours they could work and even on what kind of items or services they were allowed to offer. I think everyone can look back and see that as possibly the biggest failure in the history of the world as it has lead to a huge transfer of wealth, mass poverty, moratorium on evictions which is killing property owners, homelessness, unemployment skyrocketing, supply chain break downs, empty shelves and everyone’s money around the world hitting inflation that is crippling families everywhere. Think tanks today around the world are finally admitting that none of those lockdown measures had a single positive effect on public health.

My point today, though, is to see there is another way that doesn’t say “don’t.” It doesn’t focus on “no.” It doesn’t focus on fear. It has the power and potential to create limitless wealth, health and freedom. Focus on what you want your life to look like, set the scene and start the cameras rolling. Imagine what the whole world could look like if we got more personal and less collectivized. I don’t know if one or two people can turn the damages done by failed public policies around. However, if we, as a society are to start anywhere, it is within, right here and now, looking at what each of us desires individually, embracing and aligning with our core values and saying “yes” to everything we want inside our individual boundaries!

Today, your only assignment is that if you see the value in this course so far, to tell a friend about it. It’s going to take a lot more of us to make sovereignty the foundation of human interaction again. The building blocks are in this class. That’s why I designed it. The world needs to build back better, but it needs to do so through individuals building better personal boundaries. I need all the help I can get to get this out to the public. Thank you for showing up and doing the work so far. Each person who starts taking steps toward sovereignty brings us closer to salvation as a species.

Thank you for your service to humanity.