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Forced Constraints

Everything needs constraints. Groups of people need basic rules of behavior to co-exist and collaborate.

Rivers need banks to channel water; otherwise, they would not be rivers but floods.

Lakes have shores holding water that supports all life.

Rules, constraints, and regulations are the essential complements of energy and action, giving shape and meaning to their expression. It’s all too easy to expend energy that does no useful work because we are not channeling it into anything.

Yet if constraints are too severe and experienced as bitter confinement and deprivation of life, dissolution will follow, and then chaos.

Appropriate, well-balanced, and agreed-upon rules and limits are adopted gladly for the benefits they bring.

It is good not to confuse such limits and rules with oppression when they enable us to thrive.