There are invisible lines drawn all over the place, in my life. I’m not sure why this brings to mind the actress, Catherine Zeta-Jones. In the movie, Entrapment, she skillfully maneuvers through a dark room with red laser beams that intersect in an asterisk-barrier pattern in protection of an ancient artifact which she is about to steal from across the room.
Unlike me masquerading as Lucille Ball, awkwardly and comically trying to get out of my loved-one’s garage while badly dodging the closing garage door past one single security beam, Zeta-Jones performed an intricate ballet, or gymnastic feat fit for an Olympian. I was, by the way, unable to successfully get out of that garage without the blasted door doing its best impression of a jumping bean, up and down, up and down, endlessly up and down no matter what acrobatics I tried in order to avoid that security beam.
Meanwhile Zeta-Jones got the object. This was her reward for dodging, crossing, and landing between the laser lines of her fictitious life in that one movie.
These are not the same lines that I draw, cross, escape from, notice or ignore, most days of my life. Some of us are agile at maneuvering those lines and others of us are just plain slapstick entertainment for the voyeur’s who watch us make fools of ourselves.
About the “lines between” this and that, the most oft articulated “fine line between,” is that between “genius and insanity.” This particular fine line is tied to the idiom’s origins in English poet, John Dryden’s (1631-1700) quote in his essay, Absalom and Achitophel, “Great wits are sure to madness near alli’d and thin partitions do their bounds divide.”
Okay, there’s some Old English for you. However, the concept of “a fine line between,” or “walking a fine line,” has thrived into the twenty-first century.
We humans often observe that when we compare and contrast options between stuff, there is sometimes a nearly invisible boundary between the two. The thing that is between them is known as “a fine line,” or Dryden’s “thin partition.”
Often these comparisons, are supposed opposites. For example, many have concluded that there is a fine line between love and hate; pleasure and pain; self-confidence and arrogance; stupid and clever; success and failure, and so on.
It seems paradoxical that these things that appear to be opposites could also be considered so similar as to be separated only by the thinnest of boundaries. However, if you look closely, society usually deems one of these narrowly divided options acceptable and the other one, not so much.
I’ve seen in print a number of comparisons with a fine line between them. For example, anxiety and excitement. Presumably anxiety is the unacceptable option when you consider its twin, excitement. How about a groove and a rut? Maybe a groove is acceptable because it’s planned, carved out, and purposeful, but a rut is something of a gully that you fall into but stay because it’s easier than climbing out.
An eccentric is colorful and quirky and interesting. But their counterpart is just plain nuts. There’s a fine line between deliberation and procrastination. I guess deliberation is thoughtful preparation. My husband calls deliberation, “getting ready to get ready to do thus and such.” I dare say, he doesn’t procrastinate, that would be a delusional but optimistic hope that it’ll either get done like pie in the sky, or it’ll go away until another day, like the “rain, rain, go away, come again another day.”
I’m not bossy, but I’m assertive. “I’m not bossy. I have skills, leadership skills. Understand?” And you couldn’t possibly be stubborn. You have determination.
There’s apparently something about losing, that begs a fine line. The fact is, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. The fine line, however, separates losing and defeat which belittles the “try, try and try again” mantra of the work ethic, and permits you to give up.
In today’s political climate, there are invisible fishing lines running amok like laser beams protecting a treasure. We have a fine line between information and propaganda as well as between cultural criticism and bitterness. There is all manner of barking and biting between this faction and that one.
One has to walk a fine line these days in order to keep in balance between this side and that one without falling to either side of the line. When acts of kindness can be mistaken for people-pleasing, a disorder of self-worth and fear of rejection, we might have a cultural balance issue.
I was okay at coping with the balance beam in gym-class, back in the day. I wasn’t doing flips across it, mind you, but I could walk with a modicum of grace across its span, even trot at some speed. But a circus tight rope, it was not.
When I wish my occasional craft-work to be rather invisible, I use fishing line. It’s handy for hanging wreaths, tying things together that you don’t want to show that they’ve been tied, and what not.
Steven Wright cuts a fine line with his saying, “There’s a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore like an idiot.” Do you think he wanted us to catch his figurative hint at fishing line being a fine line, when comparing fishing, to standing on the shore looking idiotic?
I could dance around fine lines all day but not to put too fine a point on the matter, that’s a line I would never cross.