Boundaries

I walked through the forest on Sunday, a beautiful day as the Spring sun finds it’s strength. One of the tracks i ventured down became narrow, and deep, the sun fading slowly as the walls around me grew higher, and the trees closed in overhead. before long, the road was narrow, it’s path cut probably two metres below ground level, steep sides a web of roots and stone. A holloway it’s called, a sunken road.

The road itself is ancient: the forest is nearly a thousand years old, and the boundary that this track follows is doubtless older still. Whilst today it represents a separation of two church parishes, i suspect that it predates even that, possibly separating the older tribal kingdoms that preceded the formation of England itself. The holloway was not ‘cut’ into the ground, but rather worn into it. It’s both a transit way, and a separation.

Boundaries may broadly fall into two types: the physical, and the mental.

Walls and beliefs, rules and fences, knowledge and ignorance.

We are surrounded by, and immersed within, boundaries: this morning i wake up in a hotel room (the first for two years!). My room is ‘mine’ because of a boundary (the walls and ‘my’ door’), and i gain access through possession of an artefact (the key). Outside my window (another boundary, between warm and cold air) i see the road (bounded by the curb) and pavement (bounded by a hedge), and behind it the public park (open access, with gaps in the boundary wall, and governed by a legal system that permits access to anyone).

I can cross the road, but i cannot sit down in it, without crossing a legal boundary. And i must wear clothes in the park, or cross both legal and social conventions.

Because boundaries relate (as most things do) to power.

Knowledge itself has a boundary, between that which i know, and that which i am ignorant of. And even my ignorance is subdivided into my ‘known’ spaces (things i can conceive of but do not yet know) and those things that are unimagined.

My imagination may allow me to cross boundaries, at least in my own head, but does not inherently grant me the knowledge within (although imagination, coupled with language, may give me the tools to plan with you how we break in).

Each day we navigate within, between, and through boundaries: some we transgress willingly, and others we blindly stumble upon. Some we miss entirely: there may be a boundary in your head that i cross without realising. At other times we may deliberately transgress those boundaries to demonstrate our power: i may ‘get into your face’, or into your space, which is to break a boundary, either a physical or mental one.

As we imagine our role as leaders, our design of learning, or our ideas of culture, all of these conversations may be informed by an understanding of, and awareness of, boundaries.