This I Believe

I believe that boundaries don’t keep other people out they fence you in. At some point in everyone’s life they have to make a decision to cross the lines that keep them in.

Growing up in a small town with an overprotective family there was always strict rules to live by. Sitting up straight, napkin in your lap, and always using eye contact, were the normal rules. All the same, my parents wanted me to stick with the family business and work with jewelry and sales. A tradition everyone in my family with the exception of myself enjoyed. With all the strict rules and regulation I was brought up with, they eventually turned into my way of life, even if it wasn’t what I had wanted. Selling things for a living, especially jewelery something everybody could live without seemed useless to me. I was being fenced from my true self, I didn’t want to live the life my parents wanted for me. Being bounded close with my family it was hard to let them down and tell them I didn’t belong and I wasn’t going to carry the family tradition. Growing up, my mother drew the lines for me to live by, just as her mother had done for her, but the way I see it is you can waste your live drawing lines. Or you can live your life crossing them. But there are some lines that are way too dangerous to cross. I wanted to cross the line and pursue my dreams: of traveling, learning new languages, meeting new people, and exploring other ways of life. I insisted to my mother that she draws lines because she’s insecure; she sets boundaries for me because she doesn’t trust herself. I want to live my life to the fullest with no boundaries, and nothing to hold me back. But without boundaries I wonder, what would I do if I knew I couldn’t fail? What would anybody do? We make the ultimate decision for how we want to live our lives. I gave up everything, and it set me free to be who I really was and what I really wanted to do. In the end I’m the one that has to die when it’s time for me to die, so I’m going to live my life, the way I want to.