The virus has a lot to teach us.
Boundaries are essential constraints in our lives. At the most fundamental, individual level, a boundary lets me know where I end and you begin. What is mine and what is yours.
We use them in similar ways everywhere to create lines of demarcation and distinctions between places, groups, objects, ideas, pretty much everything. They show us what’s in and what’s out. We do this because they serve a purpose and most of the time they are useful.
One of the things we can forget, however, is that a boundary represents an agreement. It only exists to the extent that you and I agree that it is there. It isn’t ‘real’ in the sense a physical object is real. Even when we try to indicate a boundary by something like a line or a door or a hedge or a wall, we can always agree to shift the line-door-hedge-wall to another place, thus demonstrating the boundary’s permutable nature.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the midst of the boundary-busting ravages of COVID-19. It’s been interesting to watch the responses of governments to the disease, tightening the borders around a village, city, or country in an attempt to diminish or delay the damage that might be done. And each time, the virus teaches us that these boundaries are all but meaningless.
Keeping our kids home from school (before the authorities mandated it), disinfecting everything we might touch, wearing a protective mask and gloves, all represent tightening our boundaries as individuals.
It seems that pulling in and restricting, while it may be necessary, just isn’t sufficient to sustain all the things that are important to us.
More is required. Paradoxically, that something more looks like opening up, loosening boundaries.
At the individual level, this loosening can happen when we reach out to each other to provide support and assistance. Making a connection by running to the shops for an elderly neighbour, singing with new friends across the courtyard, or holding an exercise class on balconies. It also happens when we stop panic buying and hoarding so that there is enough for everyone. Thinking beyond ourself to take care of ourself.
At the level of nations, this is when resources are shared. Yes, testing kits and medical supplies, but also information. This latter resource is perhaps the most vital in times like these. It helps us to act wisely in times of crisis and chaos so we can stabilise the environment more quickly.
Both elements of this paradox need to be present and nurtured. It’s not about choosing one over the other — only closing down and tightening or only opening up and loosening. It’s like breathing. You can’t only breathe in or only breathe out. Respiration requires equal attention to both opposites. Without both, well, it’s obvious.
What’s curious in all this is that our boundaries take on a new and different importance when we embrace this paradox. It’s not that I become less, or disappear, by opening up. Nor is it the case that you disappear if I turn inward and appropriately care for myself. Quite the opposite. I become bigger, fuller, and more of who I really am. In the same way, by working to protect those outside their borders, by reaching across boundaries and making what they know available to others, while also caring for ‘their’ people, nations strengthen themselves.
It’s also the case that inhabiting this paradox changes things. Because of what I do for a living, I’m especially interested in how it might change the way we organise to do work. I’ll wonder about that in my next post.