Borders
They may be arbitrary and they may be intangible, but borders are inescapable. Even anarchists, lunatics, and free spirits must obey. Borders exist in all sorts of ways.
Borders. They may be arbitrary and they may be intangible, but borders are inescapable. Even anarchists, lunatics, and free spirits must obey. Borders exist in all sorts of ways.
It's a fine line. A boundary between this and not this. Borders are anti-infinite. As such, borders remind us of limits. Limits apply to our senses, dimensions, understanding, our existence. Even a non-repeating numbers like Pi (3.14159265359...) have a bound (e.g.4). Borders, they literally rule our lives.
Borders break the continuums (continua?!) of time and space. Mondays turns into Tuesdays , January to February, and 2015 to 2016. Word of the year (WOTY), Grammy nominations, Valentines, and tax returns all rely on our imposed borders on time. Space-busting borders include international dateline, a wall between US and Mexico, our home's wobbly fence, the world's longest international border (8,891 km no less!), and the access-card-only perimeter of many workplaces.
I've recently learned about yet a different kind of border...one imposed by our power company. It turns out if you don't pay your electric bill for two months and inexplicably miss the unambiguously labeled envelope warning of imminent power cut-off, the power company inconveniently (or conveniently, depending on your point of view), installs a 15 Amp limiter on your electricity consumption. I've learned a lot about the implications of this little gizmo in the last 24 hours. It allows for fridge and furnace and a few lights. Add in microwave, stove fan, garage door opener, and/or pinball machine and you kiss your power good bye. Happily, you can reset the nifty little device. Happily, my absentmindedness occurred in winter (in summer they just cut off power). Happily, we have ample funds to cover life's necessities.
There are more limits to ponder: business hours of the billing department (Mondays 8-6) and working hours of technicians (Saturdays 8-4:30). And finally, I've had to consider my own limits. How could I miss the bills? Is it possible that recent stress at work has pushed me to the limits of my coping capacity? I suspect it did. In a nearly dark, but warm home, I've got lots of time to ponder corrective actions and am determined to return to a more sustainable state of being!
And now I reach another border – the limit of my iPhone battery...
