I’d like to consider the nature of limitations. One thing I find useful is to make a distinction between the limitations we are given and the ones we choose. In my life, much confusion and suffering has been caused by not understanding the distinction. Limitations that are given are the ones that nature has hard-wired us with. I have two hands, no more. I cannot pet a cat while holding onto the edge of a cliff and sip a cappuccino in a cup I hold. It is impossible. It is one of my given limitations, and to spend time begrudging it would be a fool’s errand. As an example of a chosen limitation I present the behavior that I do not mug people on the weekends to make ends meet. This is a soft-wired limitation, an ethical choice. Mugging random stranger goes against my grain in a strong fashion. However, despite the fact that I might use phrases like, “I would never do that!”, there is nothing inherently stopping me. Physically, it is perfectly possible for me to go out and make a little extra cash by bludgeoning some hapless passerby and making off with their wallet.
The two examples above are extreme, and obvious. It is when the distinction becomes harder to make that things get interesting. Am I an extrovert, or an introvert? Are the limiters on my social behavior chosen or given? Cries of, “I would never do that!”, make the implication that social limiters are given, but is that really true? Your body moves as you will it, you speak the words that you decide to speak. There is nothing in reality stopping me from doing whatever I choose. My social limits are chosen. Sometimes that choice is made without consideration, I simply behave how I was taught is right. But, as the bard says, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” Once I have opened my eyes to the fact that my social behavior limits are up to me, I can begin to question my way through life and disassemble the presumptions I have lived on. I may well end up choosing the exact same limits, but they will now be consciously mine, and therefore more authentic.
