Found great boundary advice in a comic strip

Started by foobarred, October 28, 2022, 10:59:40 PM

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foobarred

So I read a *lot* of webcomics, partly because I love stories and partly to distract myself from my miserable existence (which is not so miserable since I went NC  :groovey:).

I'm still having trouble with boundaries, so when I ran across this webtoon, it hit hard:

https://www.webtoons.com/en/fantasy/how-to-become-a-dragon/episode-136/viewer?title_no=1973&episode_no=136

The part that struck me was in the middle (you have to scroll down a ways), where Bari (a character who also has trouble with boundaries) tells a parable about a prime minister who felt sorry for his subjects trying to cross a river, so he spent his time ferrying them across on his personal cart.  But what he really should have been doing was building a bridge.

I've always thought of boundaries as a binary thing: "yes, I'll help" vs. "no, I'll let you suffer".  But there's another option: instead of helping everybody with every little thing, I can take a step back, look at the bigger picture, and choose to address the fundamental problem. "Yes, but in a different way."

I really like that idea.