MODERN MUTING

Boundaries Start with “No, You May Not Auto-Renew My Payment”

Each Monday, Julio Vincent Gambuto presents “Modern Muting” — a weekly Medium story series dedicated to helping readers step back from all the bullshit of modern life, create quiet, re-evaluate, then go forward boldly. It’s 500 words a week of “self-help meets the system.”

We often think of boundaries as emotional. We have to put up a hand or build a figurative wall or reply with well chosen words to ward off consuming other people’s anxiety, distress, animosity, their general toxicity — as I have argued in my other work on and off Medium: their bullshit. For many of us who were raised without boundaries properly modeled, creating them from thin air is often a painful pursuit. Saying “no” is difficult. For some, nearly impossible.

What few don’t often see is that there is a direct relationship between an inability to put up emotional boundaries and a willingness to subscribe to constant consumption. At least there was in my life. My struggle with “no” extended beyond people and into my shopping habits, the lack of cleanliness in my bank account, and my readiness to click, buy, get, sign-up and sign-on so that I could be bigger, faster, stronger, richer, prettier, skinnier, better. The list goes on.