This morning I was watching our little neighborhood chippy move through the grass, stopping now and then as though whatever it was doing made perfect sense to it. I love watching the creatures that visit Behind the Puddle. I notice where they go, what they seem to prefer, when they return, and sometimes when something about them seems different. But as much as I enjoy them, I have never wanted to bring most of them inside and make them mine.
It is not because I enjoy them less from a distance. In many ways, I think I enjoy them more because they are allowed to remain exactly what they are. A chipmunk gets to be a chipmunk, with all of its strange little habits and instincts, without having to adapt itself to my house, my expectations, or my idea of what it should be. There is something kind about allowing another living thing to remain in the place where it can behave naturally.
Somehow, as often happens Behind the Puddle, that thought wandered from animals to people.
I have always noticed people too. I hear changes in tone, watch body language, recognize patterns, and often see the small shifts that happen before someone ever says something is wrong. For a long time, I think I confused noticing with responsibility. If I could see it, understand it, or anticipate it, some part of me believed I was supposed to do something about it.
That reminded me of something Alice Duffy taught me when I was sixteen years old and working as a CNA. Alice was a charge nurse I loved working with, the kind who never sugar coated much of anything and was also never unavailable when you truly needed her. During one very long shift, with a cigarette hanging from her lip, she gave me a lesson I apparently needed enough to remember all these years later.
“Just because you are close to the shit, it doesn’t mean it’s your shit to clean up.”
At sixteen, I understood the practical meaning. In healthcare, there is always something happening nearby, and knowing what belongs to you matters. Decades later, I understand that Alice was teaching me something much larger than how to survive a shift. She was teaching me that proximity does not automatically create responsibility.
There is a difference between refusing to help and recognizing where your responsibility ends. Alice was always available when something genuinely needed her attention, which may be why the lesson stayed with me. She was not teaching me to stop caring. She was teaching me how to care without assuming ownership of everything happening within reach.
Maybe the chippy reminded me of that because I am still learning it.
I can notice someone without entering their situation. I can care about what is happening without making myself responsible for fixing it. I can understand another person’s behavior and still allow them to live with the choices, consequences, and circumstances that belong to them. Being close enough to see something does not mean I have to carry it home.
Perhaps that is another kind of boundary, although it feels gentler to me than the word sometimes sounds. It is not a wall between myself and everyone else. It is simply enough space for each of us to remain responsible for our own lives while still allowing kindness, attention, and care to exist between us.
The creatures Behind the Puddle seem to understand this without ever needing to name it. They come close enough for me to notice them, and then they continue on with lives that belong entirely to them.
Maybe people are allowed to do that too.
Maybe I am allowed to let them.
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