Running into our limits

Woolsthorpe Manor, the birthplace and family farm of Sir Isaac Newton. Lincolnshire, England.

The apple tree that inspired Newton to work on the law of universal gravitation is still alive after over 400 years, attended by gardeners, secured with a fence, and cared for by National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty.

Everything in the observable universe has a nature. A way of being.

Matter interacts in predictable ways. There are physical laws. And limits. Elasticity. Plasticity. Gravity. Limits on stress and strain.

None of this is news.

It’s physics.

We arrive in the world with a nature too. Not as shapeless clay to be molded. But as newborn human beings. With natural interests, traits, and preferences. A nature that includes potentials and limits.

Parents of multiple children will tell you each kid is different. And they arrive that way.

Potentials are more fun than limits, so that’s where we tend to focus. But we can learn just as much about our nature by running into our limits. Because our limits, weaknesses, and liabilities… are the flip sides of our potentials and strengths. In fact, they’re often an inevitable trade-off.

When we pretend to be someone else. Or pursue careers or projects that reveal our limits more than our potential. We may survive for a while. But we’ll never thrive.

One of Mark Cuban’s first jobs out of college was as a salesman at a computer store. He was fired after failing to open the store one day because he was busy with a potential client. It was the last time he ever worked for someone else.

JK Rowling was a secretary for the London office of Amnesty International. But she spent too much time writing fiction on her work computer. So she was fired.

Isaac Newton’s mother removed him from his job as overseer of his family farm in Lincolnshire because it was clear he hated the work.

Humus is the word for decayed vegetable matter that feeds the roots of plants. And it turns out ‘humus’ comes from the same Latin root that also gives us the word human. And humility.

Parker Palmer, the author and speaker, calls this a blessed etymology.

“It helps me understand that the humiliating events of life, the events that leave ‘mud on my face’ or that ‘make my name mud,’ may create the fertile soil in which something new can grow.”

It isn’t in Mark Cuban’s nature to stand behind a cash register. JK Rowling would never have been a great secretary. And Isaac Newton wasn’t born to manage a farm.

Running into our limits, and experiencing occasional humiliation, can be valuable nudges. Even humus for something new to grow.