Limits

Weekly wisdom to level up your creative life in 3 minutes, for free.

A SHORT STORY

After spending the past two months in an intense work period, I’ve been thinking a lot about the limits we bestow on ourselves and others.

Ten years ago, my teacher, Sivakumar Gurukkal, helped me transcend my own limits when he invited me to climb a mountain barefoot for Sabrimala, an annual Hindu pilgrimage in South India.

For 41 days every year, over 70 million people walk to the top of a sacred mountain to witness the living incarnation of God, a small statue of Ayyappan. There are a few stipulations for the journey: you must carry temple offerings on your head, you must bathe in the river at the foot of the mountain, and you must walk barefoot.

The barefoot part was a surprise when Gurukkal looked down at my shoes at the foot of the mountain and simply said, “barefoot.” To which I replied, “Barefoot?” And he said, “Barefoot.”

It's a 4,000-foot climb, around 8 km round trip, it takes around 12 hours, and there are around 500,000 people walking with you.

After participating in the rituals in the temple and delivering our offerings, we celebrated and began the long journey down. And like anything in life, it was then that life really showed up.

Suddenly that bedrock that I climbed on the way up was twice as painful on the way down. Millions of little rocks piercing into my worn-out feet. And then, it started to rain. And not just rain, but a deluge.

When the water started to overflow the path, we stopped to seek shelter. All I could think about in that moment was every comfort in my life, every place I wished to be other than there in that moment.

And then something happened.

My community showed up in my mind. And suddenly, those limits were no longer present. Suddenly, I was able to keep going because I recognized they were standing there with me.

I remember I started to cry because I learned something so profound about community in that moment.

I learned that if you open up to a community, they will open up to you. And the more you believe in them, the more they will believe in you.

And when you embrace that belief - you can do things that feel impossible.

What are your limits?  And how is your community helping you transcend those limits?  

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A PIECE OF ART

“The Man Watching” by Rilke

I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can’t bear without a friend,
I can’t love without a sister.

The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape, like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.

What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great.
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win it’s with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestlers’ sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.

Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.

Grateful,

Michael