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Line in the Sand

26 Apr

We all have limits and there comes a time when they arrive. We’ve had enough. We’re done. We’re drawing the line in the sand. We aren’t going any further. Maybe this happens in our romantic relationships, maybe it concerns work, and maybe it’s a family situation we can’t tolerate anymore. Whatever the reason, we’ve reached our limit, and we are done. We’re over it.

Drawing a line in the sand doesn’t mean we are at a full stop. It means we want to change our direction. Our course needs to be corrected. The path we’ve been on, and the things we’ve been doing aren’t working. They are causing us heartache, or pain, or both. We took it as long as we could, and now we have to change. There is nothing wrong with changing our courses, and ending a situation we can no longer tolerate. We are in charge of ourselves, and we get to choose when, and how we want to proceed.

But before we throw our hands up, and say “ENOUGH!”, and make the decision to turn completely away, we should first take some time to identify exactly what we want in the long run. Sometimes we don’t have to totally end what we’re doing to get there, and a modification is all that’s called for. We can adjust the plan, we can amend the decision, and we can turn a little to the right or to the left to fix things. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of communicating more effectively. Sometimes it’s a transient situation that will work itself out, and we are over reacting. Sometimes we’re just tired of waiting for things to change, and our patience has worn thin. We may not want to stop everything in its tracks, but it seems like the only answer.

Are you fed up with a situation in your life? Have you had enough of dealing with it, waiting for it, coping with it, and are thinking about drawing that line in the sand? Take a moment to think objectively about the results of walking away before you plunge ahead. Be sure the end result is what you want. If it is, go for it. Walk away. Tear off the rear view mirror, and proceed ahead. But if the end result isn’t where you want to go, think about the situation again, and see if there’s a way to alter your course so that you can stay in, and still be comfortable. There is nothing wrong with drawing a line in the sand. Nothing at all. Just be sure before you make the decision you understand where it will take you. And remember, proceed with caution. Once you make the change, nothing will be the same.

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The White Board

25 Apr

You know those white boards you see everywhere now? The ones with the dry erase markers that people sometimes goof up by writing on with permanent markers? At work, when a new project comes up, the meeting room we sit in to discuss it always has a white board. Generally it’s clean and ready to use, ready to record our brilliant ideas, our best plans, and all the other things that might work, or might fail as we go forward. It’s pleasing to see the clean, blank board, and it’s inspiring to think of what we’ll put on it.

What if we thought of every new day as a clean white board ready to record every thing we do that day? It’s pristine, perfectly blank, and we can decide what we want to put on it. However, we must record everything we do, so we should probably be careful about our choices. In the morning we get up, get dressed, have something to eat – we can put all that on it. Those are fairly innocuous, and don’t require much thought. But after we record those, we start making decisions. If we get angry – it goes on the board. If we are kind – it goes on the board. If we do well or if we fail – it goes on the board. At the end of the day, how will we feel when we look at all the entries we made for that day? Will we cringe at some of the decisions we now have to face? Will we feel good about the choices we made? It all depends on what we do.

The great thing about our lives is no matter what we put on the board today, before tomorrow morning comes, it’ll all be erased. The board will once again be clean and blank, and ready to record a new day. Yes, there may be some developments from the decisions we made the day before, but those decisions have already been written down and are gone. Now only our reactions, or the repercussions from them are what we will record going forward. In reality, each day of our lives is just like this. No matter what we did yesterday, or last week, last month or last year, today is a new day. We can change our course. We can make other decisions. We can choose a new path. We can eliminate things that have gone wrong in the past. We can design a new future. Every day, the board is clean, and we start again.

Today think about your white board. What will you put on it? Will you be happy when you review it later tonight? How will you change it tomorrow? Pay attention to your decisions, remembering that even though you may not really be recording them on a white board, you are definitely recording them in your life history. Choose well. We can change the future, but the past is set in stone. Make sure, as you go forward, yours looks the way you want it to.

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