The people who wrote many of our secular children’s stories must surely have been psychotic or deranged. Why put a child to bed picturing a grandmother who is really a wolf or who has been eaten by one? Do we want to encourage our children to break in and steal from other people, even if they are bears? Are all stepmothers deathly jealous?
There is one story, though, that does have a useful message: The Three Little Pigs. (I mean, apart from the end when the big bad wolf meets his end in a vat of boiling water, which is a little unnecessary.)
Essentially, what these pigs discover is that the big bad wolf is only as threatening as the weakness of the walls they build. This is a true lesson in the nature of boundaries.
As early as Cain and Hevel, we humans have been looking for someone to blame. It is a tremendous avodah to avoid the innately natural response to a failed situation by asking: Who did this? Who left the milk out? Who forgot to lock the door? Who this? Who that?
Likewise, when we are bothered by a difficult relative or an insensitive teacher, we blame them for the effects they have on our lives. Had my parents allowed me to finish my education, my life would have been different. Had my boss showed more appreciation, I would have performed better at work.
What we may fail to pick up on is that when we assign blame, we are also assigning power. “It’s your fault that my life is…”, also means that you had the power to make my life what it is. When I hand you the blame, I hand you the keys. The weaker the internal walls, the stronger the impact of the huff and the puff.
Building healthy boundaries is not about keeping people out. It’s about clarifying what’s happening inside our boundaries. My boundaries allow me to distinguish between who I am and who someone else is. They protect me from danger and influence, from external disapproval and the attempt of others to guilt me. And the stronger those boundaries are, the clearer I am that the responsibility is mine. I don’t throw the blame over the walls of straw and hand them to an adversary. I can observe what’s happening outside but distinguish between what’s happening there and what’s happening inside.
I alone determine what’s happening inside my walls. You can disapprove, and I can hear that and even learn from it. But your disapproval doesn’t decide my fate. However hard you are trying to impact me, ultimately I consider myself responsible for my own outcome.
As couples, the stronger our relationship, the less we are affected or threatened by the outside world or other relationships. As families, the stronger our sense of identity and clarity of values, the less we are socially cajoled into compromising our standards or maintaining our standards but only for fear of what our neighbors would think and not from our own convictions. And as individuals, the stronger our sense of self, the less we will find that external factors serve as excuses for our failings.
