Limits

This has nothing to do with speed. It has to do with relationships. Not sure what picture could be used for that. I'm partial to this image, so you'll have to live with it.

I've been watching Leah Remini's Scientology and the Aftermath on A and E and I watched episode 4 last night. It had to do with people that were fairly up in the operational hierarchy of the church and then something made them question. Not just question, but it passed some threshold, some limit in their own rationalizations that their minds just couldn't cross. It wasn't that the thing was that large, but it was "the last straw" or in LDS circles, "their shelf breaks." For one gentleman, it was seeing a particular man's (ex)wife, the man that was in the room during the interview, say that her husband was never physically assaulted by the leader of Scientology. He was there. He knew what had happened. He vividly remembers the sound of the punches hitting the man. He couldn't deal with that lie. Yes, it was just one of many, but it was a lie that tipped the scales. He mentioned over and over how many things he rationalized away because L. Ron Hubbard (LRH) put this man in charge before he died and LRH wouldn't have done that if he was a bad person. He just couldn't rationalize ruining anyone's life anymore.

Another man was in charge of security at one of the compounds. He put in security systems that were meant to imprison people rather than keep riff-raff out of the compound. His limit was when he convinced his wife to have an abortion because members of his order weren't allowed to have children. It ate away at him, and eventually cost him his marriage and job. Leah had to comfort him in that he was just doing what he had been told was right, that it was what a good person does. He was conned into this way of thinking.

I had my limits too. I had to research my faith for several years, and I know which limits I struck. It also tested limits in my marriage. Tracy stayed with me during my painful realizations that the relationship I had with my own religion wasn't a healthy one. She reached her limits too, once she re-evaluated her own premises. Luckily, the stretched limits in our marriage didn't break but we did need to do a lot of talking and get into synch again.

I've known many relationships that I've been a bystander to also find their limits. Many of them broke. Some of them didn't. Ultimately, it is the people involved who have to know what those limits, those boundaries, are. Some relationships aren't healthy. Some might be okay, but not to the standards of one or both of the participants any longer. I've always tried not to judge the relationships of others, to varying degrees of success. Life happens. Sometimes it happens in big heaping bucketfuls.

That's all. No profound thoughts, just observations.