Boundaries have never been clear for me, I am getting better. A few years ago, I remember waking up at 7 am altering my whole life to accommodate the needs of one of my students. Yes it is something that is possible, especially when you need the money, yet when I think about it, I remember that most days I finish working at 9:30 pm and go to bed around 12 mn. The point is not about justifying that I could actually change my times to accommodate someone else, the point is that I did not pay attention to my own needs, I think because of necessity. It is fair enough. Yet, after years of understanding my own schedules and ways to better prioritise what I require today, I find myself now starting my lessons around 3 pm. I honestly believe that understanding the way I want to work as well as the things that are important to me, allow me to organise my work better. Today I teach many more lessons than those times, and I work as hard as in the past, but I also have time for better sleeping and some of the basic self care and nurturing routines that are very important to me. Yet, still today I found out that I had allowed certain behaviours that I was not aligned with and I’ve been put in a position of breaking relationships in order to be respectful to my own values. Clearly everything starts from your own principles, then we need to find ways to understand them and how to communicate them, always taking into account our most important and very limited resource… Time.
As an immigrant of a powerful country like Australia, I am aware of how lucky I am. When you ask here, “How are you?”, A very common answer will be, “I can’t complain”. Not a positive answer, an answer that uses can’t, yet an answer that states the honest reality, most people are super entitled. After some reflection I have, in one way or another, become entitled. Like I say in my post about Venezuela, while in Venezuela we went through tough moments of repression, the worst thing that appeared in Australian news was some potholes terrorising a suburb, we have several of those in almost every single street in my country. Because of all this, we sometimes don’t realise that not everyone has to accept us in their life and that it is ok not accept someone in your life, even if your life includes a Dance School with 150 members. We have structures in place in the school where we let people go when they treat us badly or are struggling with their own insecurities, where they need to be pursued or asked to come to classes or to listen. We want to share our knowledge and our culture, we have passion and love for what we do and on the way we have learned to also have respect for our teachers and our students. I have a similar approach in regards to my own life and relationships. If you don’t add, then I do not need you around and also if I can take then I don’t need you either. If you are in my life I want to make sure that I am able to give the best of myself.
Time is the biggest boundary of all. It does not wait, it does not care about you, time just keep playing like a song in a concert. This is it, it will go away after it finishes, you might replay it in the radio of your mind, but once it is gone, it is gone. Moments are all we have, thank you for your time to read these words. I like to think that we could learn a bit from the restriction that time offers. I hope that next time I am with my parents I will be able to have some of the opportunities I have to be with them, to enjoy their parenthood and their love in flesh and bones. Life has taken me to the other side of the world, yet still alive and capable to focus my existence on a few things everyday. Clearly, we can only pay attention to a few things everyday. Let’s try to fill our hours with the things we want. Yes, but what are those things that you want? What are the values that show you the type of friends you want in life, the types of relationships that bring joy just for existing, what are the activities that help you to be the human that you want to be. Knowing yourself is the first part of finding better ways you spend your resources. We have a great opportunity to live.
In life we sometimes have the opportunity to increase the range of our boundaries, life is flexible. If I am fitter I can do more things, yet I need to invest more time at the gym, I need to eat healthier and then I will be able to do and create different opportunities in my life. We can improve our boundaries as well as how we handle them. I found that you need to get to know what your values and your wants are as well as what your history and genetics have established for your life. Today we can find better ways to understand ourselves. From journaling to meditating to practising any sport or discipline, everything helps you to know yourself better. Some friends you see often, others you reconnect with once per year. Love is similar for both friends, we are flexible, we can accommodate, but to accommodate we need to build our own life to understand the reach of our own limitations, our own boundaries. This can only be done through compassion. Compassion enlights our boundaries, it allows us to see the good on our own journey, if we are injured and our life has to adjust, compassion could create a new world of opportunities. Compassion brings harmony to those difficult moments when you have to let someone go that does not have space in your life. Compassion helps you to be caring with yourself and with the people that you have to inform that it is time for you to let them go. I know it hurts, I know it is hard and I know you are a great human being that is putting in their best effort to bring out the best in your life.
Gracias for reading,
Pedro