Life would be completely different if every boundary were definitive, if with advancing life (both in general and in regard to every individual undertaking) the uncertain did not become more certain, the surely believed more problematic. As a result of the inherent flexibility and dislocation of our boundaries, we are able to express our essence with a paradox: we are bounded in every direction, and we are bounded in no direction.

XREF: Echoes the philosophical tension between determinism and freedom, and connects to ideas about identity being both fixed and continually renegotiated.

DEFINE: Georg Simmel defines the paradoxical nature of human boundaries — we are simultaneously bounded in every and in no direction.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 786