The Power of Boundaries: Learning to Say 'No' while Living the Virtue of Generosity

Photo by Motoki Tonn on Unsplash

There is a saying in the engineering world: “Schedule your system maintenance, or your system will schedule it for you!” In other words, if you don’t give your equipment a break, it will break down. Now, I don’t like comparing the human person to a machine – read any AI-generated text, and you’ll quickly realise that we are something far greater than a mere tool. But it can be helpful to think about the way we treat our technology and compare it to the way we treat ourselves. Think of a car, for example: it has to go to the mechanic every so often, and the more you drive it, the quicker it will wear out. We accept this as part of the nature of machines: they have their limits. However, we don’t like to accept that fact about our own nature – even though we know intellectually that we humans are finite beings, we often fail to live out this truth.

The "Yes Woman" Dilemma

I failed on this one myself this year, and in a big way: I’ve always been something of a “yes woman”, but this time I went for gold. For a period of about two months, I did everything everyone asked me to do. I went to conferences, prayer groups, choir committee meetings, weekends away, hen parties, pilgrimages – and that’s not even counting the normal ‘just hanging out with friends’ time. I was flat out, every day, all the time. And I thought this was good; we’re supposed to give until it hurts, I told myself, and this sure hurt.

Hitting the Limits

Then came the system maintenance. One day, in May, I got tired. I stopped being able to do my work. Then I stopped being able to do my prayer. Suddenly, I was losing sleep, and falling back on old, unhealthy coping mechanisms, and completely addicted to my phone. I was mystified: where had this come from? I felt that God was being completely unfair. All I’d done was try to give to people the way He’d asked me too, and it felt like I was being punished for it. But in actual fact, what was happening was that I had run face first into my limits. 

There followed a couple of months where more or less all I did was rest – I didn’t have much choice, as I practically had a meltdown if I did anything else! Eventually, I started to reflect on how I’d been spending my time, and I saw two main problems. The first was my blanket policy of saying yes to everyone and everything and the second was my tendency not to allow time for things I enjoyed doing. I was behaving this way because I thought it was unselfish, but it had exhausted me to the point where I lost my peace and wasn’t able to give to people any more. 

The Generosity Conundrum

Generosity is obviously a wonderful quality, and one that we should all aspire to grow in. However, when lived without presence of God, the way I was doing it, it becomes a finite resource. I was saying yes to everything without praying about it or trying to be prudent, and then acting surprised when I found myself trying to pour from an empty cup. The reality I was learning was that I do have limits; holiness means more than just agreeing to everything that comes along. Sometimes, I found that I do have to say no to some perfectly legitimate requests or suggestions, simply because I’m liable to crack up if I don’t take breaks. It takes time and courage to learn how to identify that moment when I’m bumping up against the boundaries of what I can physically sustain and to say no to people when appropriate. God can and will expand my ability to give but it doesn’t happen overnight, and I can’t manufacture it by force of will.

The Lost Hobbies

My second problem was tied to the first; I’d stopped doing things that renewed me – like art, writing and even exercise – in favour of things that gave me cheap endorphin hits, because my actual hobbies seemed too much like effort when I was exhausted from my constant gadding about. In lieu of practising for choir, for example, I’d spend what little free time I had browsing whatever social media came to hand. Doing my actual hobbies required forward planning, a decent space of time to sit down and work on something creative, and the longer I stayed away from them, the harder it was to get back into them. Scheduling time “just” to do something I liked seemed like the height of selfishness to me, but my actual behaviour, i.e. falling aimlessly into mindless media consumption, was far more self-indulgent; not only did it produce nothing, but it left me emptier than when I started, so that I had even less to give to those around me. On the other hand, if I blocked off an hour or two to sit and write in a café on a Saturday morning, I was in much better form and much more ready to share myself with those around me afterwards.

Balancing Act

Learning your limits is a fairly painful lesson, and unfortunately, it’s one that we often have to learn the hard way. However, if there’s one good thing that I’ve learned from my burnout this summer, it’s that God doesn’t expect us to drive ourselves like a demanding, overbearing boss. He wants us to give, of course, but cheerfully, and without resentment. So now I’m trying a new way of living, where if I can’t say yes to something without losing my peace, I say no, and I ask God to give me the ability to do it if He wants me to. Like all things in the spiritual life, it’s a work in progress, but at least I’m not frazzled with stress any more!