I hate any limitations placed on me! Do you?

[Taijibum]

I hate any limitations placed on me by people or the universe in general. I even mean things like gravity and death. I deeply, sincerely HATE them. It is the thing that drives me the most. I seek liberation from the laws and rules of this universe. I couldn't enunciate that as a kid, but when my dad explained ascension when I was a kid (Elijah, Enoch), I knew that is what I wanted. Now in my 40's nothing is changed.

 

Anybody else just feel a visceral hate for the limitations? Not hating yourself or the universe, just the fact of the limitations.

[JPrev]

To be a smart aleck, without gravity my body wouldn't have the constant reminder that it needs to stay strong (see what happens to astronauts if they don't work out a crazy amount).  So some "limitations" are really about keeping you sharp.

[Vella]

I hate the ones that don't make sense.  Like "girls shouldn't/can't strength train".  Why?  Because, umm ... something something muscles.

They're the ones I love to break.

 

I don't mind limitations like "My arms aren't strong enough to do a pull-up".  Why?  Because I haven't exercised enough yet.  But that's not really a limitation - that's a goal waiting to happen.  I also love to break these ones.

 

There are going to be the 'fact-of-life' type ones ... I'm not going to be published by the age of 21.  Why?  Because I've got about two months left, and no manuscript ready to send out.  I really don't care about these ones - I can't do a lot about them now.  Published by the age of 22, though, is still on the cards (though it'll take a string of about five lucky breaks - I don't like my chances, but it's possible), so I'll go for that one instead.

Even more basic - I can't not sleep for five days and still function like a normal human being.  It's just not going to happen.  Physiologically, psychologically, no.  I can't change that, so I work around it - by getting to sleep on a regular basis.

 

tl;dr - I only hate the limitations that have no good reason behind them.  I like to remember the old "Give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference" thing.

[Bambelbee]

I don't think death is a normal limitation. To me it's more like a deadline (yeah I know that's a poor word to describe death with but I can't think of another right now). Do the things you always wanted to do before you die because you won't be able to do those things later.

 

btt: My attitude toward limitations is similar to Vella's. I don't really hate most limitations. Especially when they're placed on me by other people I feel kind of challenged to prove them wrong. Limitations can be quite motivating

[Scream]

I think hating anything comes from not understanding it properly.  I really like the gravity example JPREV gave.

I also like the 'kite' story to illustrate how limitations are to be used to our advantage, not despised.

 

"A little boy and his dad purchased a beautiful kite.  Never having flown a kite before, the little boy was excited.  The day was perfect. They found an open field.  They wound the ball of twine around a stick so the boy could hold on to it, and then they ran, pulling the kite behind them.  Finally the wind caught the kite, and it started to fly. Then they stood still, holding the kite against the wind and letting out more string.  The kite responded by ascending higher and higher.  It was exciting, and the little boy was delighted.

 

 After a long while they came to the end of the string, and as they watched the kite, now only a tiny speck in the sky, the little boy suddenly said, "Let's let it go.  I want it to be free.  I want it to go higher still!" The dad replied, "It doesn't work that way, son.  If we let it go, it won't go higher.  It will fall instead." The little boy didn't believe him because the tension on the string made it seem like the string was holding the kite down.

 

To demonstrate what would happen, the dad opened his pocket knife and handed it to his son.  The little boy cut the string.  In moments, the kite lost control.  It darted here and there, down and down, and they had to walk a long way even to find it, a broken heap on the ground. The little boy couldn't understand.  The string had seemed to be holding the kite down.  But it wasn't.  The string provided an anchor for the kite, without which it lost its ability to fly. 

 

Like the little boy, some of us mistakenly assume that rule and values restrict us -- that if we were only free of them, we would be liberated.  The truth is, rules and guidelines provide the discipline that will ultimately lift and guide us higher than we ever could go without them."

[pirateradio]

I think hating anything comes from not understanding it properly.  I really like the gravity example JPREV gave.

I also like the 'kite' story to illustrate how limitations are to be used to our advantage, not despised.

 

"A little boy and his dad purchased a beautiful kite.  Never having flown a kite before, the little boy was excited.  The day was perfect. They found an open field.  They wound the ball of twine around a stick so the boy could hold on to it, and then they ran, pulling the kite behind them.  Finally the wind caught the kite, and it started to fly. Then they stood still, holding the kite against the wind and letting out more string.  The kite responded by ascending higher and higher.  It was exciting, and the little boy was delighted.

 

 After a long while they came to the end of the string, and as they watched the kite, now only a tiny speck in the sky, the little boy suddenly said, "Let's let it go.  I want it to be free.  I want it to go higher still!" The dad replied, "It doesn't work that way, son.  If we let it go, it won't go higher.  It will fall instead." The little boy didn't believe him because the tension on the string made it seem like the string was holding the kite down.

 

To demonstrate what would happen, the dad opened his pocket knife and handed it to his son.  The little boy cut the string.  In moments, the kite lost control.  It darted here and there, down and down, and they had to walk a long way even to find it, a broken heap on the ground. The little boy couldn't understand.  The string had seemed to be holding the kite down.  But it wasn't.  The string provided an anchor for the kite, without which it lost its ability to fly. 

 

Like the little boy, some of us mistakenly assume that rule and values restrict us -- that if we were only free of them, we would be liberated.  The truth is, rules and guidelines provide the discipline that will ultimately lift and guide us higher than we ever could go without them."

 

The trick is knowing which rules and limitations move us forward, and which hold us back. When we exercise, there is a difference between feeling the workout we are doing, where we are finding it difficult,and going on, which probably is a good thing, versus not listening to our bodies.

 

When moral teachings teach us to love and respect one another and we apply it in our lives, it helps move humanity forward; when religious teachings try to teach us that one person has more of a god given right to something than another, or tries to substitute myth for science (yeah, those of you who want to teach the earth is 6000 years old and dinosaurs lived in the Gsrden of Eden and were vegetarian as science, talking about you). The trick is in the details of figuring out which are good and which are not so good. One of the things that allows kids to grow up normally is to grow up in an environment where there are limits and boundaries, kids need that; but an environment that is full of "don't do it that way", "You should be doing this", "a good person would never do <x>, where x is not harmful", will set limits that hurt the child. The difference, at least in theory, between a child an adult is that an adult should have the wisdom to decide which limitations are good things (like self restraint, ie when your boss plops a pile of work on you and says "Oh, gee, I forgot to tell you about this, was too lazy to do it myself, and guess what, it is due by noon tomorrow", you don't want to use him/her for origami practice). 

 

Sometimes the worse limitations we have are ones we place on ourselves, because we are afraid of what lies beyond them...and if limitations and barriers are always a good thing, very few things of any worth are made by people who think life is all about limitations and barriers and fixed rules:).

[pirateradio]

The other way to look at it is a story the famous physicist, Ernst Rutherford, told of a colleague coming to him with a problem he had with a student. He said that he gave his students an assignment, they were given a problem where they were given a barometer (to measure atmospheric pressure), and they were to figure out using it how high a particular apartment building was. He said that this student wrote on the paper "As I see it, I have several options. I could take the nice bright shiny barometer, knock on the door of the apartment building, and tell the superintendent that if he will tell me the height of the building, I will give him it. Or I could take the barometer to the top of the building, drop it, time its descent, and figure out from the time it took to hit the ground and be destroyed, how high the building was. or I could tie a piece of string to it where the barometer at the end would just touch the ground, and let the barometer act as the weight on a pendulum, time the motion, and know how high the building was from the period of the barometer. What I won't do is simply do what you expect of me, to measure the pressure at the ground and on the roof and get the differential in pressure, which would tell me how high the building is, I refuse to take direction for something better thought out by myself". The student in question was Niels Bohr, the Nobel prize winning physicist who was responsible for working out the main structure of the atom and energy levels of electrons.