Soldiers likely understand this concept inherently better than many civilians do, I figure. When it is your job to work with your mates to hold the one spot that keeps the enemy at bay, they will (and many have) lay down their lives to “hold” it.

To push back hostile forces. To protect their homeland. To keep their loved ones and themselves out of harm’s way.

Single parents often know this dynamic intimately. They keep the proverbial wolf from the door every day. They protect their children while caring and nurturing them. All under the sometimes withering gaze of society who doesn’t get that keeping your family safe meant getting out.

Parents, generally, are like the plate spinners at the circus. Job, daycare, car, house, health all up in the air and kept up there by the skillful ministrations of the acrobats below. It ain’t work for sissies.

As a traumatized child, frequently abused in various ways, holding the line became a revelation in adulthood at various points in my healing. “I have the right to say no? Really?” “Other people protest or refuse when they are asked to do this?” “I am not a bad person for standing up for myself?”

These were real questions that I frequently asked. When I recently made a return visit to property I had entrusted to someone else, I felt the old familiar stirrings of: “Am I okay with this?” “If not, why not?” “Do I have the right to express my distress and concern?”

The answer in my rational mind is yes. Someone entrusted to take care of something for you who lets you down does not deserve praise and accolades. They deserve a strong talking to.

“What were you thinking?” (I learned she was thinking only of herself and her own needs.) “Why did you make those choices?” (Because I needed the space/comfort/independence to do things my own way.) “Do you have any idea how much you have cost me in time, wasted effort, upheaval and money?” (No idea whatsoever. She’s never owned a house or been there so it is a blank slate to her. And it shows.)

I quickly started making decisions to shut down her purview and influence in my private sphere. I started hearing every possible excuse from her for why what was done was done the way it was – all gauzy and whiny and self-interested.

I am all about celebrating the independence of the individual. But here is what I’ve learned that means. Being an adult and acting accordingly means recognition that you are part of a larger whole – a relationship, a family, a religious tradition, a community, a country and so on.

All of those social constructs have their own inherent contracts. You accept and act in mutually beneficial and cooperative ways if you wish to keep moving forward.

Break the rules and pay the price. Cheat and you threaten a marriage. Treat parents with neglect and disdain and you may find yourself disinherited. Break society’s biggest rule by murdering someone, the price you pay may be your own life.

To move forward individually, we need to cooperate with and acknowledge the wider forces and context in which we operate.

“No man is an island,” said John Donne. Not in a functioning society at any rate. I observe huge slippage in the rules of the social contract these days. Teenagers are alienated and confused.

The YM/YWCA, and similar institutions, has gone the way of the Dodo bird as a meeting place for young people to physically develop and learn healthy ways of working and competing with each other.

Individuals such as celebrities are elevated to such dizzying heights that the ground they sprung from – just like all the rest of us – is disregarded. Until they hit a brick wall, of course.

But no worries, life’ll learn ya. It always does. If there is one consistent rule in life, it is inevitable ups and downs and reversals of fortune, whether health, wealth or love, that rise up and often define us.

When the chips are down along with your luck, hope to be in the company of good others who will walk the steep and rocky parts of the path with you and not just the open grasslands.

A person requires the company and support of others and society as a whole in order to thrive. The line is from John Donne’s Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, published in 1624. “Look, I know you’re very proud man, but you need to let other people help you if you’re in trouble. No man is an island, Dan. It’s when our communities rally around us in times of tragedy that we truly appreciate that no man is an island, entire of itself.

https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/no+man+is+an+island