Hitting the limit

You would have faced it umpteen numbers of times every day. In fact, it can start right from the moment of your waking up. If you had a nice sleep, you would want to continue with it. Suddenly, you realize you are not going to get any more of it. Obviously, you have hit the limit! Beyond that point, you cannot force yourself into sleeping. Any forceful attempt is going to result in some sort of discomfort. You will lose all the good feelings arising out of the peaceful sleep you managed get earlier.

I have to tell you very clearly. Hitting the limits is a natural part of living. If you are a keen observer of life, hitting the limits always has an important message for you. Observing it carefully is one of the important things that can help to change your life. The change can both be positive or negative. There lies your choice. Active observation facilitates the change to happen in a non-disruptive way.

Hitting the limits is where the life reveals itself. Being within the limits provides you a sense of satisfaction and feeling of comfort. Almost always, just hitting the limit and not going beyond is where the satisfaction finds its peak. If you want to have a real feel of what I am expressing here, please have a look at the process of your inhalation and exhalation. You can, at the maximum, inhale to the capacity of your lungs and exhale to the limit of what you have inhaled. Obviously, you are operating within the limits, most of the time not even touching the limit, on both the ends. As long as you remain within those limits, you continue to live happily. Try attempting to go beyond on any side; you will have immediate discomfort for sure.

There are two types of limits you keep on hitting. You can differentiate them easily. The natural limits are your gifts. The artificial limits are created by you and others who participate in the game called your life. You should recognize your natural limits and respect them. You should recognize the artificial limits and try to overcome them. If you inspect carefully, your success is dependent on the balance of respecting the natural limits and overcoming the artificial limits.

What are these artificial limits, and how to recognize them? That is a million dollar question. There several reasons for this. One of them being, there are plenty of them and you keep hitting one or the other every living moment. The life brings you into a position where you find it hard to recognize them because of sheer numbers. It is a problem of plenty and it happens to be a case of familiarity breeding something beyond contempt. Let me pick up a simple example. Suppose, as soon as you get up in the morning you reach out for a cup of coffee or tea. Somehow, you forgot to replenish the stock of coffee/tea powder. Obviously, you have hit a limit. This particular artificial limit has a boundary. The boundary is zero. Yes. Zero stock of the required material. What can you do in such a scenario? I am letting you think about it. Please do not limit the solution to just one option. Look at all the possible options available to you and you have a pretty neat lesson waiting for you there. Of course, at the end the thinking project, you have to choose from one of the available options for the immediate progress of your life.

There are several artificial limits which have no boundaries. One of them is associated with the money, particularly with what is called net worth. It does not have a zero boundary. When you take a loan, the zero boundary is broken and you move into the negative territory. Pretty funny thing is you tend to fluctuate between positive and negative all the time. Carefully observed, you will find a very important characteristic of this artificial limit. You move too much into negative, you are in for trouble. Alternatively, when you move too much into positive you are in for trouble, too. Some people tend to wrongly believe the problem of plenty is not a trouble at all. I advise such persons to have a look at the history of humanity.

We have dealt with the core issue of hitting the limit. It is time to hit the limit or this particular piece of writing, too. I recognize my hitting the limit with respect to the detailed thinking that is required to carry this essay into number of pages. As I type this, I notice hitting the limit of my patience to rush forward and publish this piece of writing. Along with that, I am hitting the limit on the speed of my typing. Oh! I am overwhelmed and feeling uncomfortable as I have hit too many limits, simultaneously!

Note : Here is an sincere appreciation to Mr. Thomas Beckett for language related corrections.

This is a watered down standalone extract of a chapter from my book “Identify Your Calling”.