The boundary stone

Last week I was reading an interview with Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love) and was struck by this line:

And I have a small stone "Boundary God" statue from Sulawesi Indonesia right here on my desk, next to my laptop, reminding me not to say "yes" to everything!

Oh, I thought, a boundary marker; that's a wonderful idea.

"Boundaries" has turned into one of those pop-psych terms that shows up every time women start talking about their lives (remember "co-dependency," last decade's...