Over the years I’ve been come to be known as a whirling tornado, a very social Tasmanian Devil, the human equivalent of a runaway freight train, or sometimes the living embodiment of the unstoppable force. And, to some degree, I may have actually earned this. You see, The Rogues Gallery – the title my friends and associates bear; a comic book term – has seen me bounce back from some very nasty predicaments in my life; including injury, illness, the conspiracy of life situations, and even two near death events in the past eighteen months.
“IronChuck” is more than just a clever play on my name; it can be seen as an accurate description, depending on who you ask. However, like all things that age, iron does rust. And, as I get older, I’ve come to understand something very important in life; know your limitations. It’s important to define that a little, though. I mean, we aren’t just referring to the wise words of one tough no-nonsense over-the-top street cop, here…
There are, in fact, many ways to have – and know – limitations. Yes, limits are a boundary of a thing; time, knowledge, distance, area, ex cetera. And this loose definition does cover just about all of them. For example; knowing your limits when out drinking with your friends is a very important thing to have. Or knowing how much gas it will take to get you to the next gas station is understanding both the boundaries of your car’s use of fuel, and how far you can make $20 worth of gas stretch.
Knowing your limits can potentially save your life, as well. Over the past three decades I have had to endure a lot of situations, events, and physical situations to get to forty two…
No, that is not as boast; be thankful you haven’t. (Or, my sympathies if you have.)
This has developed a really high threshold for discomfort; both physically and mentally. By extension, this is my limit to how much I can handle of what life throws at me. And that has gotten quite high, as I have now found out. Both my heart failure and the infection in my gut nearly took me out because I was able to shrug them off for so long, saying to myself; “eh, if it’s really bad, I’m sure it’ll get worse, first.”
And that is not a conceit on any level; it’s just how I have come to operate in life. I was a weakling as a child, so I fixed it. And now I have to understand that, because my limits are so high, I need to pay more attention to little annoyances because something serious might be starting. Think of it as death of a thousand papercuts. My cardiologist was the one to point this out to me as, in the early months of my recovery, he would complain that I was shrugging off serious symptoms like so much a bothersome cold.
But being aware of limits isn’t just physical. There are many times we undertake something and understanding the limits of our ability to engage that situation might be critical to that situation. In every day, that could meaning giving up an aisle seat on a flight because you sit by the emergency door, and can’t – for whatever reason – handle the particular responsibility of that seat. More commonly, a lot of us commit to a situation in our life unaware of our personal limits to be in that situation. Knowing when to ask for help is a great example of understanding limits. Seeing when something is beyond your level of understanding, or you have no experience with something and seeking out some help isn’t a sign that you are weak, or dumb. Quite the contrary, being able to put aside your ego to say to someone “Hey, I have no idea, here; what have you got?” shows that you have a level of comfort with yourself and also prefer to ask rather than stumble blindly on, potentially making things much, much worse.
When setting goals, it’s important to ask; “do I have the tools, or know-how to accomplish that?” If the answer is no, you need to adjust your goals, or how you go about accomplishing them. In this way you can avoid burnout, another example of limits; when you’ve hit your saturation point and enough is enough. The same can be said for friendships and interpersonal relationships. What can you put up with, deal with, and where you have to draw lines can make or break buddies and marriages a like.
Knowing your limits also breaches into honesty, but I’ll be saving that for another entry later on.
A couple weeks out from forty two, now, and I have to say that knowing my limits, and being comfortable not only in them, but being able to tell where and when I can work to expand them –because limits don’t have to always be an absolute boundary – has put me into a better place in life. I’ve learned where to back off my own personal expectations of myself… and others. I have figured out how to set more reasonable goals for myself. And I have used it to expand my health; both physical and emotional.
Like just about everything else you’ll read in the next couple weeks, here, it’s a work in process. But it’s a work in process that is always expanding, encompassing more and more; pressing the boundaries… the limits… of who I am and what I can be.
When you meter your journey in steps, the miles can pass quickly.
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