One of the rules by which I build software is: constraints outside, freedom inside.
The conditions belong at the edge. What happens inside can then be direct. No function has to defend itself against its own callers, because at the edge it has already been decided what comes in. The boundary is there so that the inside becomes free.
With human beings, that flips.
What the Boundary Does in Code
It says what passes through. Nothing more.
It says nothing about what is inside, how it works, how it is allowed to change. That is precisely why it works: it describes a transition, not content. What lies inside remains its own affair.
What the Boundary Does in a Human Being
It stops talking about the transition and starts talking about the content.
That is because nobody enforces it from outside. A type in code holds itself; it needs nobody to carry it. A boundary around a human being does not have that. It must be carried, and the only way a human being carries a boundary is by making it a part of themselves.
“I cannot promise that” is a statement about a transition. True, testable, bounded. “I am not the kind of person who can do that” is a statement about what is inside — and it is no longer testable, because it has no edge at which you could measure it.
The distance from the first statement to the second takes half a sentence.
Where These Boundaries Come From
Very few of them are drawn by oneself.
They come from outside, often kindly packaged, often well-intentioned. At some point nobody has to say them out loud anymore, because you hold them yourself. That is the point where they become hard: a boundary that comes from outside can be negotiated. One that you hold yourself is not negotiated, because it no longer feels like a boundary, but like a fact about yourself.
The Difference That Matters
A real limitation is concrete and has an edge.
I cannot promise reliability across years. That is true, it is named precisely, and it leaves everything open that does not depend on it. It also says what would need to be done: a structure that does not hang on a single person.
The broad version does not say that. It says “that’s not who I am,” and from that follows no task, only resignation. It is convenient because you never have to look at it again.
Where This Becomes Political
Precisely this difference is currently becoming politics.
The “healthy slap” does not say what must not cross a line. It tells a child what it is: something that gets hit. I have written about this before, and the adjective is the whole trick — it turns violence into a boundary that is supposedly good for you.
Criminal responsibility at fourteen is the same movement with better manners. Formally, it is the opposite: a barrier attached to an act and not to a person. Except it does not stay that way. The record follows the person, the category sticks to them instead of to what they did, and “offender” is a noun.
A punishment describes an act. A category describes a person. Whoever is made criminally culpable at fourteen gets both, and they carry the second one long after the matter is over.
That does not mean boundaries for children are off the table. A fourteen-year-old needs boundaries, and some must be enforced. The difference is whether they say what is not acceptable, or what someone is.
Both are drawn from outside and afterwards held from within. That is the part that stays.
The same applies to a bureaucracy that squeezes every case into a form. What dies in the process is first freedom, then the inner life, and probably people too. I write probably because I cannot prove it, and I leave it standing all the same.
Why the Inner Life Dies
Because a boundary around a human being does not protect what is inside. It replaces it.
In code, the boundary protects the free space behind it. In a human being, the boundary becomes the description — and a description that you mistake for a fact is no longer examined. You can still change. It just has to happen against the description instead of through it, and that is vastly more work.
What I Do With It
Leave the narrow statement standing and cross out the broad one.
Not out of optimism. Because only the narrow one describes something that can be tested, and because only from it follows a question that can be answered: What would be needed for it to work anyway?
The broad statement leaves no question remaining. That is its entire purpose.
Where Healing Begins
Not with the boundary disappearing. A real limitation remains, and it should remain.
It begins where the sentence gets its edge back. “That’s not who I am” becomes “I cannot promise that,” and with that a question stands in the room again: What would be needed for it to work anyway? As long as a question remains, something is still open.
With yourself, that is small. Noticing which of the two sentences you just said. In the beginning, it is no more than that.
With your neighbour, it is harder, because it means restraint. Not handing out descriptions. Saying what you saw, and not what someone is. A description comes from above. A boundary is spoken alongside, at eye level.
And almost everyone who holds a description about themselves received it from someone. Not being that someone is something you can actually do.
What Heals
I have no recipe for it.
What I have seen: the opposite of a hard boundary is not a missing boundary. It is one that may be talked about. Together, openly, and with the possibility of owning up to a mistake without it turning into a description.
Punishment and bureaucracy do the exact reverse. They turn the mistake into a trait, and they make it rational to hide it. Whoever hides does not heal. They merely administer what they have to conceal.
A sick society that sticks together has more healing in it than a healthy one that does not. By that I mean places where everyone has something and nobody is reduced to a description because of it.
That is not a theory of mine. After the First World War, guilt was attributed to an entire people — not a barrier for an act, but a description for all. After the Second, people rebuilt and integrated instead of describing. What became of each, I do not need to spell out here.
We have seen it more than twice.
By René Jochum - LLM Translated. License: CC-BY-4.0.