No really!!
Yesterday I was looking online at an ergonomic office chair and the sale pitch was “limitless possibilities”, “unrelenting drive”, unstoppable will”, and “unquenchable thirst”.
An office chair!! We’re going to hell in a handbasket 🙁
But maybe not. This weeks’ video is about the cultural delusion of limitlessness and how we might be able to lean into and love limits and constraints.
Your thoughts?
As always, love to read your thoughts about the topic – have at it (but within your limits 🙂
Thank you for yet more Liz wisdom. Adding a little Miki Kashtan wisdom:
“Paradoxically, once we are able to accept the limits to our capacity and operate only within them, our capacity, both individually and collectively, can increase. This can happen in at least two ways. Individually, the moment any r stops fighting against the limits of our capacity, all the energy that went into fighting within self is now available to be channelled towards the purpose for which the fight was enacted in the first place. Recognising the limits, mourning, and bringing tenderness to our limits also creates more willingness to receive support, as well as to adapt to our limitations by creating structures around capacity, which, again, allows us to stretch further without the same effort.”
Embracing my own limits is an ongoing learning journey, particularly finding the capacity to do it intentionally and proactively. The body is wise and will place hard limits on us if we push beyond them too hard for too long. I used to equate physical and mental collapse as my limit (e.g. I’ll only stop if/when I’m sick), but realise there are actually two circles/boundaries and that we want to try to stay within the first one:
(1) life-affirming limits which we intentionally choose and enact, and which are joyful and gentle
(2) life-damaging limits which smack us in the face when we smash into them through over doing things, and which can lead us into ongoing cycles of burnout which eventually end up in chronic illness.
I remember the moment when I decided I wanted to start living my life within circle 1, rather than 2. There was this feeling of gentle melancholy and deep relief. But of course, I have to keep deciding to do this anew every day, because Western culture wants us to do otherwise.
I find it particularly hard to practice living within circle one in social movement spaces where pushing your limits is the implicit norm. It is hard to resist the heart-wrenching moral pull of the “Cause”, hard to resist the hooks and praise and glorification of over-work, hard to keep believing that each of us living within our limits IS the cultural change that the climate craves, especially when we have grown up with productivity culture etched into every nerve and muscle fibre of our bodies and beings.
We need to surround ourselves with others living this way to help make it stick. And on the climate piece, I try to constantly remind myself that a crisis which involves massive overshooting of planetary limits surely must be an invitation to all of us to start living within our own personal limits, for each of us is part of nature, a tiny yet powerful fractal in a wider planetary whole.
Wow, I love this concept of the two circles/boundaries, it’s so elegant. “Life-affirming limits” is my new motto – thanks Charlie!! Your reflections also make me think about how do we know what our limits are individually and collectively when, using technology, we have extended our bodies and minds, and it’s become so normalised, like “Is my computer/phone/whatever device now part of me and therefore part of what I can include in my capacity assessments?” kind of thing. Posthuman boundaries????
You had me at posthuman. There’s a very cool (but dense) researcher called Rosi Braidotti who both embraces and pushes back against the ‘technology is now a part of our body’-ness of current culture in a helpful way. She says that we have to connect with affect/embodied emotion as a core part of our relationship with technology. That by noticing the shifts and pulls (and limitations) of our body while we are engaging with technology, we can become radically human through the wonders and limits of embodiment – or as she says it, ‘through the embrainment of the body and the embodiment of the brain.’ Just writing this comment I’m wondering if this should be called ‘the mosthuman’ 😛
Also: Charlie. Such eloquent and clear writing! Thank you.
Thank you Liz and Charlie for this wisdom. I have certainly been on a long journey to embrace limits and don’t always listen to the whispers of my body until they get loud. But I’m much better at it and I don’t push through being tired anymore. As someone who burnt out 3 times before I was 30 and the last time it was pneumonia that stopped me, I have learned the hard way and can appreciate the idea of working smarter not harder. It’s such a strong narrative, especially when those of us with marginalised identities have been told for so long that we have to work harder to get anywhere close to equal footing with the rest of society. I love the idea of life affirming limits, and will notice more when my behaviour leans toward life damaging limits.
Thanks again for another great topic and great discussion!