Boundaries vs Empathy

 A while back,  I saw a friend's post on Facebook; it said "I am training to make my Boundaries stronger than my empathy."

At first, this is a difficult thing to contemplate; at least if you're like me. How to turn off the empathy? How to not connect to each and every person I come in contact with?

But let's look at it another way. 

Let's think of it in terms of authors. There are millions of writers out there - trillions? of books available. There is no possible way to read them all, even if I had the inclination. But I don't want to read them all anyway. I like specific types of books; I like specific authors. I have guidelines, criteria, for reading that brings me joy. You could call that boundaries. 

Okay - the same applies to food right? There are a thousand different kinds of food and another thousand ways of preparing them. I know that I like some things and don't like others and sometimes like others - depending on the way they're cooked. I also know some things are really good for my body and some are uncomfortable. So I make choices; I have criteria. I put boundaries in place for my consumption so that I am comfortable and strong and happy and aware. (Or sometime uncomfortable but still really happy. Can you say green chile salsa?)

Okay. Let's get a little closer to the empathy thing - let's talk about donations and volunteering. You can't turn a corner without seeing something or someone requesting money. Whether it's Patreon or tithing; donating at the counter of the grocery store or helping a neighborhood kid with a college fund. Special interest groups and focused appeals go out every single day - and burn up our phone lines as well. And they all want us to feel guilty for not giving directly to them instead of to someone else. But we each have XX amount of money or time to give.  Even the richest person I know has a finite amount of money available for distribution at a specific time. Even a person with gobs of free time only has 525,600 minutes in a year. So choices are made - interests are defined. Limits, and thus boundaries, are placed.

And if we think of empathy as something physical - as a coin to spend or book to read - we realize that we can only "care" so much. The cup runs out, the interest depletes, the ability to look outside ourselves and connect with another person dwindles. We only have so much focus to give before we are finished and wind up sitting in the bed with the covers over our head wondering why we feel so bad. And empathy is focus, it's putting ourselves in another person's shoes and "feeling" their situation. Sometimes blotting out our own personal situation.

So let us know our edges. And let us be strong enough to "just say no", put on our own oxygen mask first. And let there be healthy boundaries.