CHAPTER ONE
Made With Limitations
Everyone is born into the world as a baby. True, we each carry bundles of possibilities into the world but we don’t immediately become that possibility. Yes, we see the future lawyer, pastor, doctor or any other great achiever, but the baby has to be groomed into the future. Around the baby are the objects of limitations, levels of them that have to be broken each step on their way up to becoming what the future holds.
No one was made to immediately come into the world and fit the puzzle. The world wouldn’t be an interesting place if we all came into it and had an easy run all the way. There won’t be a story if there was no path to glory filled with thorns and hassle.
If one knew that he was meant to be president and it just arrives to him, he may not appreciate the administrative and leadership responsibilities that characterize the role. God didn’t make us adults immediately we jumped into the world because he needed us to learn around our limitations that will arrive to help us discover that part of us that could be unlimited.
Sometimes, we’d say some person is just perfect. Sadly that’s not the truth. The truth is we only seem to see the area of strength and perfection that now characterizes a once imperfect personality. We only see the finished product, the unlimited being from the man that was once filled with limits.
The reason athletes or sportsmen train before coming to the competition is to learn the limitation and then practice against it. Off course, there are many limitations on the race course; the wind, one’s capacity, weight, strength factor, endurance capacity. The more one practices, the more he learns what limits him and he tries to make a way against this limits before the D-day when the battle arrives and he discovers that he is not just running the race but also running against his limitations. If he has learnt to war against his limitations before the race, he finds it easy meat in the actual race.
The moment a great thought or idea pokes into our mind, we hear a small whisper say “can you?” the limits begin to build about it immediately. We become acquainted with the challenges rather than the big picture that the idea is projecting. Limitations increase the moment we make it more important than the task that we intend to accomplish.
There must be at the back of our minds an understanding that we are limitations bound. We should expect the limitations, realize it was meant to be there because that’s how we were wired but we don’t have to dwell there.
As a young man, I had always had my big aspirations. When I entered into the university, I had anticipated that while coming out of the university five years later, I’d be a high flier. I had from the start defined my end point being to attain first class. I began studying hard and developing the consciousness of a first class engineering student. However I had thought that was all I needed until I began to meet the hurdles of limits that plague the academic route. I struggled to find my feet only after understanding the predicament that characterized the limits or constraints that bars highfliers at the university.
My undoing was that I failed to come to grasps with challenges first before developing my pose. I was blind to my limitations. I had thought, I’d just walk in to the university, study, write the examinations that followed and come through with As in every course. That was the ideal.
The reality I face at the university was that I didn’t just have to study and write the exams, that was for my pocket, It was what I brought out from my pocket that really mattered. That was my limitation. I didn’t have what should come out from my pocket “I had no money”. Once I discovered the limit that had formed around me, I fought my way around it raising finance to push through my academic goal. From less than average result at the beginning, I experience a turnaround in my grades but it was too late to push for a first-class, I accepted a lower second class upper grade.
The higher we strive to reach, the bigger the limitations that form around us. When we throw an object up, we discover soonest that it comes down. The forces that stand against that object that had an up quest limited its upward trajectory so that it falls. We call it gravitational pull. The man who designed the rocket first had to understand the limits placed by the forces of gravitation and designed his craft to be able to get past the gravitational pull of the earth.
If you want to go far, know the limits and then work with the limits in mind. Sometimes, we just drive on because we have being fed with the belief that we have the capacity to withstand any challenge that comes. Well, that’s true, the capacity is there but you can’t define the capacity you can go if you can’t measure the limits that you expect to overcome.
Great minds will often expect limits of challenges and they try to define the limits ahead as they make the plans for the future. They accept that it is an inherent factor. A car manufacturer builds a car with limiting factors such as friction and drag in mind. When a car is said to be able to drive to a speed of 200km/hr., it is because the builders built it against expected limiting situations. The airbag are designed with the highest impact possible test done and the manufacturer boasts that he has made a good car.
God made you with limitations in mind. Yes, you are the perfect man only because you’ve learned over time to live above your limits. If you are not doing too well now, think about the previous limits you have overcome and understand that there is a big future out there and it is achieved only after you have overcome these limits.
Because we are inherently born with limitations, we are made to learn. We learn to brush our teeth, comb our hair, walk, speak etc. we learn to do everything we have ever done. Everything we have learned are limits that had once hanged around us which had stood as debars to us doing great things.
The key point is that around us are objects of limitations. We are bound to live with them but not for them.