Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Boundaries

It’s interesting how the world works. We start with limitless potential and possibility. Over time, our decisions create the context of our lives, including boundaries and restrictions. Our possibilities are bounded by those boundaries and restrictions. And there’s nothing wrong with boundaries and restrictions; they are necessary components of our lives. Without them, we might never know any sense of security.

What happens, though, is that we sometimes lose sight of the fact that we’ve created a context that includes boundaries and restrictions; we think that the context we’ve made is all that there is. We are blinded by the choices we’ve made.

Then something happens and we make new decisions—sometimes just one new decision—that obliterate those boundaries we’ve stopped noticing and we find ourselves faced once again with limitless potential and possibility.

That’s what happened to me this year. I had made choices—good choices, choices I was happy with—and over time those choices and the choices that derived from them and the choices that came after that created a (really, pretty great) world, but one past the end of which I couldn’t see.

Then something happened that exploded that world, and suddenly I was faced with limitless potential and possibility.

And it was scary.

It was scary, but it was also exciting. It was exhilarating. It was like taking off a pair of too-tight shoes at the end of the day; I’d stopped noticing how tight they were until my feet were free.

If I wasn’t going to stay where I was, I could go anywhere. Anywhere! The whole world opened up before me!

It was awesome.

Then I began making decisions. It isn’t possible to go “anywhere”—one has to choose a single place. I considered many places—North Carolina, Idaho, Washington, Utah, Hungary, the Middle East—but my heart was inexorably drawn to Hawai‘i, and once I decided that was where I intended to be, my scope narrowed.

I’ve had to stay flexible, of course—since it’s impossible to be fully self-sufficient, my decisions have been predicated on circumstances as well as my own desires and intentions—but each decision has defined a new context and begun creating a new world. Just Tuesday I decided to accept an employment offer, which more sharply defines the new boundaries of my new world.

I will teach 8th grade English/Language Arts at Lahaina Intermediate School in Lahaiana on Maui.

This decision dictates:

  • who I’ll meet
  • where I look for a home (Lahaina, Kā‘anapali, Wailuka, Kihei)
  • how much I pay for a home
  • where I get a post office box
  • what it will cost to insure my motorcycle
  • what activities I’ll be able to engage in
  • how I approach my job
  • what I do outside my job
  • how often I go to church and where

so many aspects of temporal existence. Some things are possible, but without changing this decision, other things are not.

That’s okay. That’s the consequence of free will; every decision opens up some possibilities and closes off others.

It’s a new world, different than the one I am leaving, but both are largely of my making, and while I’m going to miss much of my old life, I’m excited to discover what unexpected opportunities and challenges this new world has for me.

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