Lines in the Sand

One of the wisest, or hardest hitting pieces of advice I have ever been given was this: “you can have sex without kissing.” Context would give this more meaning but I’ll let this suffice for now.

Sometimes we create arbitrary boundaries, lines we write in the sand to ensure our safety. But sometimes the line in the sand makes us forget the ocean around us that we can drown in, or the cliffs we can fall from. 

That’s not to say boundaries and lines aren’t important, because they are. But we also need to remain aware of the temperature of the room, temperature of our thoughts, the depth of the issue, the expanse of possibilities. Sometimes we need to stop staring at the line, and look around at everything else that’s happening, and the consequences of those choices. 

And I don’t mean for the context of this to revolve solely around intimacy. Because it can apply to so many things. Our emotional well-being, our spiritual well-being, our moral or ethical well-being. All of these depend on expectations we set for ourselves, and sometimes expectations for others. But arbitrary lines in the sand without a framework for the why’s and the how’s and the when’s etc., leave room for loopholes. And those loopholes can be just as damaging as crossing the line in the sand if not more so. Sometimes those loopholes take us so far down the beach that you can’t even see the line you were worried about crossing. 

Sometimes it’s worth asking yourself, is this line in the sand keeping me safe? Or is this line in the sand giving me excuses to do everything but, despite the original intention of the line?