Margin

By Jeff Becraft

If you look at a piece of notebook paper, you’ll see on most pieces the blue lines, which is where we’re supposed to write, and then on the right and the left, you will see thin red lines, which are the margins.

And what are those margins there for? Well, they are there to create margin. That means, if you get to the end of the sentence and you’re not yet done, or you’re in the middle of writing a long word, well… you got a little bit of extra space that you can spill over into. It also gives the appearance of the written page a whole lot better appeal.

But if you don’t have any margins… and you just keep writing… and you get to the edge of the piece of paper and you’re in the middle of a long word… there’s no place for you to go.

This is true in our lives as well.

A friend of mine and also a former boss let me borrow a book called Margins. I actually never finished reading the book (I have another friend who makes fun of me because I quote all these books I have never read) but I did hear the author interviewed on a 30-minute radio show one time and I got the overall gist of what he was saying. And what he was saying is that we need margin in our lives.

Without margin, when we face a crisis, there’s no extra space. There’s no extra critical mass – emotionally, mentally or physically – for that crisis to spill over into. If we’re pressing all the time and going all the way to the edge, there’s no margin, there’s no space, and then that can lead to very difficult times in many regards.

Now, there are times in life where we are facing an emergency or an extreme situation and we have to be running on all eight cylinders for an extended period of time.  But if that is our modus operandi, then that can be disastrous and simply lead to exhaustion… in more ways than one.

So my encouragement for us today is to try and create some margin in our lives. Right now, I really don’t have much margin in my life, and that is not good. So I am thinking about ways that I can correct that. It won’t just correct itself.

So, I hope you can find some margin in your life.

Jeff Becraft is the Director of Our Place of Hope and the Director Emeritus for Youth Corps and has dedicated much of his life to helping shift the vision of people’s lives. Our Place of Hope is a paradigm shift for people living with mental illness that encourages them to regain meaning, purpose, and hope for their lives. You can connect with Jeff at  [email protected].