Respecting other people’s boundaries is something I’ve worked on quite a bit in my life over the past few years, but there’s another type of boundary I’m realizing I need to work on as well and it’s one I came face to face with recently through a very painful experience.
It happened a few months ago while I and my partner were out taking a sunset drive through a local state park named Crane Creek. There, we came across a number of people sitting alongside the park road near the beach, taking pictures and peering through binoculars. When we saw what they were looking at, two bald eagles sitting in a tree far off beyond a roped-in area, we opted to join them and did our best to enjoy the view. Unfortunately, we didn’t have anything to zoom in on them, which my ego then decided wasn’t acceptable at all. That’s when I noticed the roped off area didn’t continue onto the rocky shore next to the lake.
“Hmmm, maybe I could go walk down those rocks and come up from behind the tree where the bald eagles are perched and get a close-up picture on my phone that no one else is ever going to get?!”
Yes, that indeed was the thought I had at that very moment and it’s one I’ve regretted ever since. Nevertheless, as I cut through the thicket that bordered the rocks and the lake and headed onto the first of those huge boulders I was about to embark upon, my intuition began nudging me, “Andrew, this isn’t a good idea, you really need to turn back…”
Alas, I didn’t, because my ego often has the tendency to push the limits of boundaries in life, solely to get what I want. So, I continued to proceed forward anyway, hopping from one boulder to the next, when…WHAM!
Down I went, onto one of the large rocks, as my feet suddenly hit a patch of ice that hadn’t melted yet in the spring thaw off. My left hand awkwardly slamming into one of the boulders in the process, hyper-extending my ring finger grossly backwards. Now, two months later, I still have a bunch of pain in that finger in two different places and have definitely had to learn another very painful lesson in life because of it.
Like so many boundaries I used to cross with friends in the past, where I experienced many of them disappearing from my life because of it, here I faced something similar because I didn’t respect a boundary that was clearly established. A boundary that was not only for the safety and protection of the bald eagles, but also for myself.
Looking back, I really wished I had listened to my institution, which I ultimately believe was my Spirit attempting to gently let me know I was doing something that wasn’t in my highest good. Yet, all too often, I’ve ended up having to go down very painful roads in life, to learn lessons that my ego doesn’t think it needs to learn.
That’s why I’ve decided to respect any roped-off area the next time I come across one, even if my ego begs for a closer look, and even when it attempts to show me a potential exception might exist to the boundary itself. Because the fact is, boundaries are usually in place in life for pretty good reasons. So, hopefully I’ll choose to listen to my intuition the next time this arises and not my ego, as I really don’t need or want any more pain in life, especially any that is directly caused by my own ego-based actions…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
