The Transcendental: The Church Project

Boundaries 2: Omnipresence

Boundaries are what we keep for harmonious relationships. Without boundaries, we get chaos in the form of abuse, accidents, and just disarray. But for a long time, people have thrown boundaries and walls together and made them synonymous with each other. But these two are not the same thing.

A boundary is a good rule set in place to draw a line between balanced and imbalanced, within good limits and outside the set limitations. I say 'good', not 'prescribed' because not all prescribed limits are good limits. A good kind of limit would be like a speed limit on a road where it's accident prone and it's been found to do with exceeding good limit. But here, you could see what's prevented and that is an accident. And it's a good thing to be preventing accidents 'cause that's for safety. These limits are not created to chain people to rules, it's got not much to do with freedom, but with safety and balance and harmony. How people could check the validity of that statement is by exceeding the good limit and finding out for themselves why that limit is set in place. It's not so they're not free to do what they want but because accidents could happen.

And so we say a boundary and a wall are two different things. A boundary is a net that stays and there are walls that people are better off without and so we have people who call themselves rule-breakers who are actually just tearing down walls or rules that don't make sense, not good rules in the community. An example of that would be a wall that creates exclusion or confinement where it's not necessary. Communication barriers, for example.

Walls and barriers - that's what's synonymous with each other. And people know that 'barriers' is a word used with 'challenges' and 'difficulties'. One good reason to tear down a communication barrier is how that came to being in the first place. There will be some sort of either a trauma or a misconception behind its creation. Tearing down this wall/barrier is how community work is made possible. Access is created not just for community workers but for the people who need that support. When people talk about making services in the community accessible, that's tearing down barriers they see to service delivery and uptake. I say 'trauma' or 'misconception' 'cause shame or feelings of abandonment could keep people from uptaking services created for them. Our community workers will say: That's nonsense, these services have been created with you in mind. Let's tear down that wall. I know how that's been created, but you're better off without it. This is not a boundary, this is a wall. This wall creates suffering for people, makes people suffer needlessly because of a misconception/misunderstanding.

Another example of a communication barrier is a language barrier. And we have interpreters or translators to do that community work of tearing down that barrier so the service delivery and uptake is good. Sometimes, it is not that one person speaks in a Japanese language and the other person speaks Spanish 'cause language barriers are not limited to that. You could have people who are all fluent in English (could speak and understand English) and yet you still get misunderstandings. We don't get interpreters and translators for that, we have people who are good mediators who could identify what the barrier is - and a barrier you would see in situations like that could be pride or a clashing of egos or it could be something like false knowledge/information. So, that mediator would be like: What do you know? And to both parties. 'Cause that's how you resolve an issue to do with false knowledge/information. You ask people what they got, and if it's false, then it gets replaced with the truth. Identifying and resolving a situation where it's pride or a clashing of egos, that requires not just mediation but leadership and counseling, where the person asks: Well, what is important to you? Is it the service delivery or your pride/your ego? Do you just want to get the work done or do you need to get the better credit/kudos? 'Cause sometimes, the problem people have is that they have an issue with the perception of others getting ahead. And personally, I don't think that has a place in community work. If you have that mind that perceives inequality that then gives you feelings of superiority or inferiority, you will be having ego clashes with somebody at work who also has that kind of mind. You will be pulling each other down and feel good about that, and well, community work requires team players, people who have a good sense of collaboration work, and don't have either a superiority or inferiority complex but instead of that they have the confidence.