Boundaries are so important. I think that the concept of boundaries is relevant to every problem that mankind deals with, even on the biological level. Even cancer is a boundary problem as those bastard cells are running amok and will devour everything in sight. And certainly on an emotional/spiritual level, boundaries explain most if not all of our maladies.

One simple clinical intervention I used when in practice was to try to teach some simple little boundary for a client to set in his life. This could be something as simple as planting a flower and caring for it, this simple act of “caring” being one bit of order in a life that often had little structure.

And then I like to think of marriage as a boundary setting on a grand scale. I see marriage as an imposition of order on chaos, two disparate individuals with their own whims and fancies about life, choosing to commit to the “arbitrary circle of a vow.” (W. H. Auden) If this vow can be honored, marriage can be a container in which two individuals mature together and resolve many of the interior haunts they brought into the union. In short, marriage can be redemptive.

Let me close with an excerpt from a poem by Edgar Simmons entitled, “Bow Down to Stutterers”:

Proofrock has been maligned.
And Hamlet should have waived revenge,
Walked with Ophelia domestic corridors
Absorbing the tic, the bothersome twitch.