The Lines That Bind Us
A couple of hours after I published my piece about tennis line calls and, more broadly, cheating last week, Mark, a friend of mine, approached me with a different idea.
“What you really need to write about is how lines rule our lives. The real ones and the fake ones.”
If you draw lines in Chinese chalk or cinammon, ants won’t cross them — it messes up their sense of smell. As humans, we don’t have that excuse.
Then he told me a story.
He’s a tennis coach, and he does a variety of exercises with his players to try to get them to be more aggressive in attacking the ball. In one of them, he asks them to stand behind the baseline, then step forward when he hits the ball short to them. They will step forward, he says, but will consistently stop short before they cross the baseline. If he moves them forward to a starting position just inside the baseline, they will move forward for short balls – but they won’t cross the next line – the service line. “It’s like the line is a wall,” he said. But there’s no wall. There’s no rule saying you can’t cross a line to hit a ball. The barrier is in their head.
It ain’t just tennis. Our linecrossaphobia is real and deep and broad.
Sometimes it can make our lives better and safer. But it also holds us back. One of our key tasks as humans is to discern which lines are real and useful and which ones are imagined and limiting.
We learn early on to color inside the lines for our first art projects, to stand in line for school lunches or set up behind the line when races start. We learn to play or sing or act or pray the line as written.
Americans are respectful of lines; Japanese are reverential.
As adults we wait in line at grocery stores, to see shows, to board planes and trains. We hold on the “line” for customer service calls. If we don’t get the job, it hurts, but it’s easier when someone tells us it went to the next person in line. We respect (some cultures more than others) the lines people draw around playing fields, stages or public buildings.
We toe the company line when it comes to explaining our behavior at work. Our national leaders announce diplomatic “lines in the sand” or “red lines” and suggest serious consequences if our enemies cross them.
Lines provide a useful function when they remind us that there is a fundamental set of rules or norms by which we should live. If we stand behind them or live inside them or start with a common understanding of them, we may be slightly inconvenienced, but we accept that as a cost for a functioning civil ecosystem.
Some of the lines in our lives are real; others we make up.
But the lines that help order our work and play and spiritual lives work can also hold us back.
It’s not just Mark’s tennis students that imagine barriers where they aren’t. Our brains are loaded with nonexistent barriers like that. We think we can’t apply for a job because we aren’t “smart” enough. We assume (or other people tell us) we can’t start a company or do a new thing because we are too young, or too old, not wealthy enough, white enough, urban enough, male enough or (insert barrier here) enough.
Thirty-five years ago I didn’t feel comfortable making a decision to join a church because I believed I wasn’t a good enough person. If only I could become a little better, I would be worthy of crossing the line from the outside to the inside. Everyone I spoke to told me there was no standard of goodness required, but I couldn’t bring myself to believe that. The line was only in my head, but I couldn’t unsee it. It took months to convince myself to cross the line.
Earlier this month I found myself facing off in a tennis tournament against a player who was ranked higher than I was. When I discovered he wasn’t actually better than I was, I got cattywampus. When it came to the biggest points, I assumed I was going to lose them. And I did. I created a false line.
Afterward, Mark (the guy who hates imaginary lines) asked me what happened.
“I just didn’t believe I could beat him.”
“Why not?”
“Because he was ranked higher. And I thought he was better.”
“Was he?”
“Well, no. At least not today.”
“So what was holding you back?”
“I couldn’t figure that out when I was in the middle of it!”
This “figuring out” thing is a real problem. We know in our heads some lines are real and some are imagined, but it is hard in real time to tell the difference.
So it’s seductive when someone comes along who offers to make it easy for us. This past week has brought a series of declarations from our president declaring with confidence the “answers” to some of our toughest “line” questions.
This week, he has announced the answer to the line between male and female. He’s drawn a new line between citizen and noncitizen. He’s blurred the line on whether assaulting police officers or sedition is ok. He’s ended the line of people waiting to be accepted as refugees. He’s dissolved the line between traditional governmental employees and political appointees. And that was just Monday.
The older I get the more I find myself going the opposite way. I get nervous anytime anyone tells me they have discovered truth; that the answers are simple. I find myself much closer to the position of former North Carolina Governor Terry Sanford who acknowledged the temptation… and urged against it: “Everything seems so complex now,” he said in a speech back in 1963. “So big, often so frightening. Small wonder that people look for easy solutions, attempt to find answers in simple alternatives.” Uncertainty is difficult, he said:
“Difficulty, however, is no excuse for sitting still or turning back.”
Sixty-two years later our collective uncertainty is higher and the difficulty of finding our way forward is greater. But if we are going to break out of our ruts or break through to new heights, we still need to question and confront and weigh all the lines in our lives, to work out which ones are real and which ones imagined. Yes, other people can advise us on which ones are which, but in the end it is our work to do. And difficulty is no excuse.
-Leslie
Notes:
Mark Vines tennis camps: https://www.facebook.com/SETcamps/
On the importance of norms: https://www.boneconnector.com/writings/spirit-mangroves-costa-rica
Those lines around the Capitol building: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/21/us/politics/jan-6-defendants-freed.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
President Trump’s initial set of Executive Orders, 2025: https://www.axios.com/2025/01/21/president-donald-trump-executive-orders-list
Terry Sanford addresses: https://digital.ncdcr.gov/Documents/Detail/messages-addresses-and-public-papers-of-terry-sanford-governor-of-north-carolina-1961-1965/3691994?item=4769825