i am just back from a walk on my neighbour's farm.

It is fairly early here, a still morning after a rather stormy night.  Muddy underfoot with the long seedy grass heads still bowing under the weight of the rain that cloaked them.  Skylarks singing.  Paradise ducks doing their  raucous call and response with their mate.

Roger, my generous neighbour has recently got a new batch of calves.  Little steers, soft brown and white, black and white, hip bones high and small testicles the signal that they are sadly destined for plates (sorry Vegetarians and Vegans). They are about 4 months old and young enough to remember that people often mean a source of food, so they are not terrified of humans yet.  Sensibly wary is how i would describe them.

I needed to walk through two paddocks of them to explore the part of the farm i wanted to stretch out on and i noticed something that my metaphor obsessed brain played around with and i thought i would share with you.  What i noticed was how each calf responded differently to my presence.  And how their response shaped their experience.  Here's how it worked.

Walking in their paddock, getting closer to them, i came to raise the level of concern in them from wary noticing to fear.  "Gotta get away from this" began to be the feeling in the little herd as i marched along.  And what happened next was interesting.

As i came to represent fear for them some of them stood watching me to the side of the path.  I walked by those ones without them having to move or get agitated.

Some of them were in my path and sensibly moved to the side.  Their agitation probably calmed pretty quickly as fear inducing me moved further away.

Some of them careened away in front of me, small hooves skittering in the mud, banging against each other but persisting in their determination to stick to the path.  They kept going on the obvious road despite the fact that "fear" was still on their tail.  They were visibly anxious and it wasn't until some calfy-genius decided to veer off the path and his mates followed that calm was restored and me in my function as fear kept on her way, leaving them in peace to moo each other into a state of calm and order again.

I thought about the wisdom of the ones who chose to stand aside and watch fear pass by.  How they maintained a state of ease and peace by not engaging with me apart from the wise noticing.

I thought about the ones who responded to my presence in a more reactive way but soon found their wits in stepping off the worn path and out of the path that fear was taking.  Able to calm themselves in a short time.

And then there were the ones who let the presence of fear rob them of their thinking mind and into being swept ahead, into more contact with fear.  They stuck to the worn path.  They spent much more time engaging with the very thing they were trying to escape.

How often do i charge down a well worn path with fear at my heels when i would be better served by standing calmly and watching it march on its way?

Moo. 

I grew up with the thought that boundaries were bad.

I was required to be boundary free to ensure that things were alright for those around me.  If i had any privacy or contrary wishes i was called selfish and mean spirited.  Trying to enforce a boundary meant that i was told i was difficult to live with and would never make anyone happy.  

So my wiring got set to boundary free.  Take what you want, treat me how you want, just don't reject me for my difficult nature, i will do my best to hide it and keep it as far from your face as i can.

This of course meant that i was twisted like a pretzel.  I had to try not to displease others, i learned to put up with being hurt and i was only able to take sneaky sips of the life that called to me like a siren.  Taking those sips i felt greedy for trying to live in a way that was not pleasing to others.  Greedy for wanting to feel fulfilled.

So many years i tied myself to the mast of a boundary free life and wondered why i felt so damned battered and resentful.  I mean lots of other people got to live the life that they wanted and have fulfilling relationships.

I guess i just chalked it all up to my inherent unpleasantness and carried on.

Slowly i recognised that i might have been fed information that wasn't really useful to me.  That somehow the idea that my imperative to make boundaries=disloyalty might have been wrong.

Sniffing around the idea of boundaries as a good thing i kind of got put off by thinking i had to  be all "kick arse" to have boundaries.  I am not really made like that,  Don't have the footwear for it i guess!

I embarked on a few learnings about boundaries - primarily Pixie Lighthorse's bootcamp, Pia Mellody's book on Co-dependence and finally Randi Buckley's amazing Healthy Boundaries for Kind People. (I highly recommend it and it is still available for new members)

Slowly I am seeing how being boundary less has meant that i saw it as an act of love to constantly give myself away to people. To sacrifice my wishes and desires on the altar of "see how much i love you"/

I saw how taking shoddy treatment and relinquishing my desires meant that i was a bit player in my own life.

I saw how boundaries allowed me to be less defended (who knew)  i could establish a boundary and allow the other person to meet me there.  Or not.  And if they chose not to that was a gift because it means that i don't have to expend energy running to their side all the time. 


With boundaries comes the potential for the hard stuff to dissolve.  No pleasing those whom i am not a fit for.  No saying sorry for my own desires to people who really won't get it.


With boundaries i can create the conditions for the life i want.  


I can be as greedy as i like with my own life.  Sharing it with those who want that for me too.


Are you greedily living your life too?


  

Swooping at this time of year from flower to flower, their nectar seeking beaks covered in pollen the air covered in their joyous bellicose raucousness.  On a sugar rush from the nectar perhaps they swoop and dive and whirr overhead in ways that can startle the bejesus out of me if I am daydreaming.

They have dialects apparently.  Tuis from where I live sound different to  tuis in other parts of the country.  They speak in dialects.  Dialects of joy.  They learn to mimic other birds and humans (I have even heard one ring like a telephone)  They are alive to the world they live in.

Can you imagine what the world would be like if humans played and sang their own song at the top of their voice and flew wildly - dancing with the sweetness of fresh nectar coursing through their blood.  Allowing their beauty to be just an incidental part of themselves, not something they strove for or obsessed over.  If they sought out that which nourished them and were alive with the joy of it all.  Can you imagine?

Today I saw a Tui on the road.  Dead, feathers glinting in the sun, ruffled slightly by the breeze.

I had to stop.  There was no way I could leave that beauty there to get ground into the tarseal.  I have gloves in the glovebox so I can move roadkill (to help stop the Kahu or hawk getting hit) and so I turned around, donned my gloves and lifted that beauty off the road. 

It was still soft in my hands.  But gone.  Already that exuberant heart had stopped beating.  I imagined it's misjudged swoop across the road and into the path of an unwilling car.

I sent a message to its soul and carried the beautiful shell of it home with me.  Willow and I laid it to rest near the flax that it loves so much.  But before I did I took these photos... revel in the beauty with me.  It is all so very fleeting.  And all the more glorious because revelling in it while it is here makes it more real, more generously shared and more powerful.