The Line

   “Where is the line with you?” - Björk
 
The line, the line between us all.

Between strangers, between lovers. Between friend and family. Courtship (what a quaint word that is these days!) is all about finding the line. One reason that casual sex may be so unfulfilling is that the line is ignored, no boundaries are established, nothing comes out of the experience—it is intimacy wasted. When relationships are established, the line becomes defined. If two people have greatly differing ideas of where the line is, strife and misunderstanding will ensue. If they share similar ideas about the line, both will grow in their relationship and in themselves. This has only a tangential relationship to right and wrong or ‘morality’. If you survey couples who have been together a long time, each may have reservations about the other’s ideas, beliefs or traits. But they will know, with a high degree of certainty, where the line is.

Good friends always know where the lines are. Families have special problems with lines, every familial relationship has another dimension to it: you were born into a family, you didn’t chose them. The lines have been set from an early age, before the self was even defined. A lot of people struggle throughout their lives when the lines separating them from their relations are hopelessly entwined with those lines that connect them. Destructive behaviors: addictions, abuse and hatred, abolish the line with disastrous results. Where is the line with these blog entries and comments? Part of the appeal of blogging is the distance that we share - the line is ‘out there’ somewhere, and we can be a little freer in our expression, and a little more open to the ideas of others.