I’ve been thinking a lot about Boundaries since this picture was taken, and not only because, days after i was captured on camera resisting the urge to reach past the one demarcated by the road cone, another lady got schooled by a Jaguar in the dangers of violating them (boundaries, i mean, not cats;).
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/10/us/arizona-zoo-jaguar-attack/index.html

As a Reiki teacher, i usually discuss boundaries with people when we “do” 3rd chakra (aka Solar Plexus, Manipura), our energy center in charge of important concepts like personal power and free will, concepts which are so much simpler to address at the individual level, becoming much more complicated when we have to interact with other Wills.
https://tinybuddha.com/blog/two-types-of-boundaries-that-can-help-you-take-good-care-of-yourself/?fbclid=IwAR0l3dXoFgkZWXxtWFPHe5U8LzMdfYMzs7215MQ8UW2X4gLrfEbIJrlKDsE
“Maintaining a steel wall like this is exhausting. It shuts out the good as well as the bad, and we risk becoming closed to life. It also means we don’t move forward in life either, as we’re busy using all of our energy to hold up the wall.”

Walls are one of the most substantial ways we indicate boundaries, lines that we don’t want crossed, and of course there are always potential penalties for crossing lines uninvited (penalties which should always fall on the crosser, not the crossed, one reason i was so heartened by Jaguar-woman taking full Responsibility – another 3rd chakra concept); but there’s often a cost for drawing those lines as well, consequences (often unintended) which escalate higher the harder we push to keep people out. At the individual/personal level, it can lead to isolation, loneliness; at the national level, it can lead to extinction (this time i mean cats, cats like Clyde, that’s the name of the adorable fellow in the photo who can usually be found at the Texas Zoo).

However one feels about the politics surrounding “the Wall” (how i miss the days that was a Pink Floyd reference), one thing is for sure: blameless, beautiful, and often endangered animals like the Ocelot (who used to range in the US as far as Arizona but now can only be found in this one tiny area of Texas) are getting “caught in the crossfire.” If you’d like to help, please consider supporting organizations like Friends of Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge  (https://www.facebook.com/VivatheOcelot/) who took this photo; ironically, having my picture taken can be a real boundary issue for me, but in this case it was well worth letting down my guard! <3 )))))