Crossing the Line, part 2 of 2
The Buddha comes to town, and a farmer comes to see him and starts complaining about his problems. His wife this; and his children that; and the ox is sick; and the soil is poor; and there hasn’t been enough rain and, if there were, the roof would leak; and the people to whom he sells his rice are cheating him.
The Buddha stops him and says: You have 83 problems. Farmer says: That sounds about right. How do I fix them?
Buddha says: You’ll always have 83 problems. Maybe you solve one, or it goes away on its own, but another pops up to take its place. Always 83 problems. Farmer says: Well, what good are you?
Buddha says: I can help with the 84th problem. Farmer says: What’s the 84th problem?
Buddha says: You think you should have no problems.
For the person with good boundaries, problems don’t bother them. Problems arise. One responds to them as well as one can. This is life. Whether you call them problems or challenges, there’s always the next one to meet.
Having good boundaries doesn’t keep out your 83 problems, but it does keep out the 84th problem. Your problems then don’t define you; you aren’t consumed with the thought that you shouldn’t be having this problem.
The 84th problem is the extra. Your problems (or challenges) are enough by themselves; you don't need to add anything extra. But we often do add extra problem to our problems. Whenever we're annoyed by the problem, when we think it's wrong that the problem exists, when we let the problem trigger our reactivity and upset our equanimity, we are adding extra problem to our problem. Good boundaries keep out that extra bit.
Life IS problems, or we’d have nothing to do with ourselves, no reason for being. We need problems, challenges, but we don’t need the problem OF the problem. We don’t need the extra, the 84th problem.
Everything has its place. This is a very ancient spiritual insight and teaching. All things belong. On the one hand, being mindful that all things belong eases anxiety, irritation, annoyance, anger. On the other hand, it’s also true that if all things belong, then so does your anxiety and anger. This, too, is recognized in ancient spiritual teachings, though the very modern perspective of evolutionary psychology helps us understand it.
Anxiety belongs because our ancestors needed anxiety. Anxiety about that lion prompted them to run away, anxiety about a brewing storm prompted them to seek shelter. Homo sapiens emerged with a particularly advanced capacity to worry about the future, to imagine dangers that weren’t immediately visible. This was probably driven by the processes that made us not only social animals – as wolves, orcas, emperor penguins, chimpanzees and others are – but ultra-social: able to adaptively cooperate at an extraordinary level because of an astonishing capacity to imagine ourselves into another person’s situation, grasp what they’re trying to do, so we can help them do it.
We were motivated to be helpful because we were able to imagine the future – farther into the future and in more detail than other species. I would help you because I imagined a future in which you would help me – and that capacity allowed systems of reciprocal altruism to begin to form.
As our symbolic language emerged, we were able to communicate to create shared imaginary futures, and then cooperate to bring them about.
Which is all very wonderful. But there’s a rub.
Our ability to imagine the future, and to be goaded to appropriate action by a little anxiety about that future, can easily go to far. Evolution gave us these goads, but it didn’t give us very good mechanisms for turning them off when they’re no longer helpful. Our brains were built to worry, and it’s very easy for them to fall into a pattern of worrying even when it does us no good, and only produces chronic stress and anxiety.
Making matters worse, the futures we imagine aren’t just worries about the weather, or predators, or food sources. Our imagined futures are heavily peopled. "Can Bob be counted on?" "Was Sue lying, and she’ll stab me in the back?" Our brains evolved to negotiate the fantastically complex balancing act of wanting and needing to cooperate, but also guard against being taken advantage of – balancing the costs and risks of cooperation against possible benefits.
This balancing act is carried out through – or manifests as – our sense of fairness. We are as ultra-social as ants or bees, but for us, our sense of fairness is the crucial regulator of our sociability. My brain is built to monitor possible future scenarios of people being unfair to me, and whether they’ll think that I’m unfair to them, and whether they’ll think I’ll think they’re unfair to me – it’s exhausting. Or, rather, it seems like it would be exhausting, but in fact our brains seem to rarely tire of thinking about fairness. Our ability to think about fairness in such complicated ways is also our beauty as a species.
So we are built to worry what other people think, and to want to be in agreement with them. Yet, the more clear we are about who we are, the less need we’ll have to be self-protective, i.e., defensive. So here’s my thought about boundaries and borders: the better your boundary is, the less need you have for a border. That is: those who are self-differentiated don’t have to be self-protective.
When difference and conflict aren’t a threat to your sense of self, then ego defense mechanisms don’t get triggered, and the walls that block empathy don’t go up. When boundaries are solid, borders don’t have to be. When we’re comfortable with ourselves, we can let people in -- we can take down the walls that shut them out. When we don’t require conformity of ourselves, or of others, we can be free to connect with and work with very different people, appreciating and not being threatened by their difference – while also appreciating and not being scared by our own differentness.
This is true on the personal level, and it is true on the national level. As a nation, the US has lost its boundary. We have no clear sense of who we are as a people. We are, as it were, “out of bounds.” The old story that defined our nation was deeply problematic in many ways. It was a story shot through with patriarchal and supremacist assumptions, and the critique that helped dismantle the old story was well warranted. But a new and better story has not emerged. In the interim, we don’t know who we are, don't know what "America" is.
In compensation for our lack of boundary definition, the national psyche instead turns to border protection and a very literal wall -- blocking empathy, blocking compassion, blocking our own growth, blocking the very connections that our spirits crave.
As our national norms break down, lines are crossed. Lines of civility are crossed. These lines helped "political leaders hold two opposing ideas in their heads simultaneously:"
"...the first is that your political opponents are wrong about many things and should be defeated in elections. The second is that you still need them. You need them to check your excesses, compensate for your blind spots and correct your mistakes." (David Brooks, New York Times, 2019 May 9)But it's gotten easier and easier to cross the lines that held our leaders in a system that helped them know how to work together amidst disagreements, and find and build on common ground while respecting the beneficial role of political opposition. Crossing those lines makes it harder and harder to cross the lines that exclude and shut out -- the lines of enmity and othering.
The task before us is daunting. But as Rabbi Tarfon says, be not daunted. You are not obligated to complete the task. Nor are you free to abandon it.
The task is to strengthen our boundary – clarify our principles, know our story and stick to it, develop equanimity in our integrity, bring our nonanxious presence. Only thus will we be able then to cross borders, replace walls with bridges, join hands, and end the loneliness.
* * *
See Part 1: Good Boundaries
