Turning limits into liberty
Words & images © Paul Ransom
“Argue for your limitations and, sure enough, they’re yours.”
– Richard Bach, Illusions, 1977.
When I first came across this now oft quoted line it struck the obvious chord. As an impressionable 15yo with messianic delusions, it served to bolster fantasies of limitless genius and world-saving capacity.
Time and other erosions duly abraded the gloss of such youthful hubris. Now, nearing sixty, I have a different take on Bach’s formula. Actually, I’ve flipped it; because, counterintuitive though it may seem, I have learned not only to embrace limitation as liberty but as inspiration. The daily limits I encounter – physical and otherwise – seem less like frustration or resignation and more like an impetus for creativity. Furthermore, an invitation to humility and gratitude.
However, rather than dwell in high-minded abstraction, or spew forth yet more New Age cliche, let us begin where we intend to finish. Here on the ground.
To that end, with apologies for any perceived indulgence, allow me to paint a highly personal, context specific picture of the way that our framing of limitation can create a sense of space in our lives that can feel…well, boundless.
As I write, my circumstances are relatively constrained. My eyesight is slowly getting worse, I have a nagging health issue, and I do not ‘officially’ have a home. In addition, I am living out of a bag in a small community on an island where I do not speak the local language. On the face of it, I am isolated, disabled, and currently being denied the familiar comforts of home and conversation. So why am I basking in a sense of lightness and enjoying an episode of enhanced creativity and personal freedom? And why have the last four weeks been suffused with joy?
- No, I’m not on drugs – although, to be fair, I could be deluded; and this may be a fool’s paradise. But like I said, humility, gratitude. Translation: not taking things for granted. If this is indeed an unsustainable dream state, at least I will have known it, if only briefly.
Here, I am reminded of my late grandmother and others of her ilk. Working class people who lived with what we in the fattened First World would now consider intolerable privation. She would often speak about ‘going without’ and ‘making do’.
This spirit of adaptability and improvisation is something we are all capable of. Look around, and you will see most people on this planet still walking this walk; while some of us merely talk it, or share it as ‘wisdom’ on social media.
Point being, my present state of happy lightness is not the result of enlightenment or hard work. Mostly, it springs from the simple act of paying attention. Or rather, how, and on what, such attention is focused.
1: A way of seeing impaired vision
Travelling solo as a legally blind* person is tricky. At times, downright hazardous. Unfamiliar surrounds, local quirks, traffic going the other way. Throw in a foreign language you are yet to adequately grasp and…yeah.
* In my home country, Australia, I fall below a certain line and am thus considered technically (if not totally) blind.
You may wonder why I would take the multiple risks involved. It would have been safer, if not cheaper, to stay put in Melbourne – with all its amenities and disability access ramps – rather than haul myself over to the Korean island of Jeju, where randomly strewn, artfully disguised protuberances and a pathological passion for uneven stair heights await the myopic traveller.
The answer is one of attitude. Framing. On one hand, tangible disability. Limits with hard – that is to say, blurred – borders. (Even at home, the ground is out of focus, stairwells are obstacle courses, and menus illegible.) Yet, my eyesight has its positives. Stumbling around Hamdeok Beach this week, I have been impelled every day to reach out to strangers whose language I am not fluent in. Notions of shame and other vanity poses are out the window; which feels like a huge weight off. As in, permission not to bother with that shit anymore.
Embarking on this Korean adventure has also sharpened my focus on what I do have. As yet, I am not so blind as to be incapable of navigating the trip hazards and enjoying the beauty of diving into another culture. After all, the world is not me and my problems.
The encroaching limits of my condition are helping to amplify this. Precisely because I am so often curtailed, and nudged towards discomfort, this journey is no mere holiday. It is a challenge, a testing of such limits.
Yet, the rewards are more than the ego tick of apparent victory – for I am not fighting – rather, they are the upsides of acceptance. Through this lens, impaired vision is less disability to overcome, more gift. For it is a call-to-action, a reminder to behold while I still can.
2: Speaking without talking
We mostly take language for granted. Until we no longer have such easy access to it – like when we plonk ourselves down in another country for a couple of months.
Granted, I could apply myself more diligently to improving my Hangukmal (Korean). I could also rely on translation apps to bail me out. However, I am choosing not to, because when we are stripped of words we are denied recourse to habitual lies, and we can no longer bore one another with tiresome, boastful anecdotes.
Yet, when words are of limited use, we reach for other tools. A more instinctive radar. I first encountered this a decade ago, working with a Chinese media company; and here on Jeju-do, where the locals’ English is as patchy as my Korean, the phenomenon is in full effect. Between us, using an improvised blend of both languages, we are mostly making do.
As someone who has leveraged his way with words – the gift of the gab – to charm and convince, to earn and achieve, the loss of such faculty may be considered a serious limitation. But actually…I’m loving it.
Although, as a non-Korean speaking Westerner I am occasionally regarded with head shakes and suspicion, or confronted with terse, rapid-fire outbursts, the inevitable missteps are usually little more than mildly awkward. And if I look like a dumb tourist sometimes, so be it – because all these ‘lost in translation’ moments are trumped by the warm glow of non-verbal connection.
Without the usual scree of words we adapt, inventing other ways to find our people. This mostly instant, principally gestural understanding frequently feels more truthful, as if rooted in an instinct for kindness and hospitality. It is perhaps an innate recognition of likeness and opportunity, as opposed to a reflex detection of threat. A sensing of similarity rather than difference.
Do we intuit each other’s character more clearly because we cannot obscure the view with words? It certainly seems so.
True, it has also been the exception rather than the rule; but that’s okay, because the 10-15% hit rate more than makes up for the misses. Then, when a random halmeoni (grandma) stops you in the street, takes your hands in hers, smiles up at you with unbidden and incredible warmth and welcomes you to her island home, all you can do is bow deeply and offer profound thanks.
This a language more beautiful and human than a million words.
That’s right, Mr Bach, I will own these verbal limitations. What’s more, I will transform them into a lexicon of greater dexterity and meaning than the shallow cant of vain aspiration and spiritual correctness.
NB: In the interests of transparency, I should also note that having an iron clad excuse not to engage in conversation is, frankly, a blessed relief.
3: The luxury of life in a bag
As I post, it has been more than a month since I moved out of my previous rental, and it will be at least another ten weeks until I land in my new apartment. (If indeed it is available by then.) Meanwhile, life in a bag. Hotel rooms, couch surfs, and a conveniently timed house sitting gig. Classic digital nomad stuff.
This between homes ‘float’, (as my friend Josephine dubbed it). has not only created space for an extended stay on Jeju but encouraged me to lean even further into the ‘minimal’ way of living I have been practising for several years.
Fact is, there is only so much you can lug in two bags. One check, one carry-on. 28kg in total.
Restricting access to the full range of domestic chattel – both its comforts and utility – is always eye opening. For instance, even after more than five weeks on the road there are items of clothing I am yet to wear. Indeed, I have probably over-packed.
What does this tell you? Simple: that what we feel we need is more likely simply what we want. And, as my gran and others discovered before me, the longer we ‘go without’ the less we notice the without part. Take me away from stovetop percolators and fancy Bluetooth speakers and…turns out I don’t really miss them. As for the extended wardrobe, well, I’m sure the silverfish are dining out.
Once again, the limit is key. Rather than a weight or a chain, or an excuse, it is a breath of fresh air. A palpable latitude. A space opening out, like a wide blue horizon.
The bag bound existence – which every backpacker and one suitcase migrant knows – lets us glimpse the potential magic of limitation. Though limits can be crushing and cruel, even when self-imposed, if we tease apart the notion of what we mean by ‘a limit’ we soon realise that all parameters exist in a yin/yang relationship with possibility. With expanse.
Being limited to less than ten percent of my things is not a form of temporary poverty, it’s a reminder of how rich I truly am. I have so much in life. Far more than what was available to my grandmother or within easy reach of billions of people today. Though I may be going blind, and currently starved of decent conversation, right now I have everything. Okay, not literally – but you get the point.
*
Whilst the benefits of confronting and overcoming limits – negative self-beliefs, restrictions imposed by others, etc – are obvious and manifold, it is likewise empowering to work within our limitations. To be nimble, creative, mindful, appreciative. Viewed as opportunity, as prompt or permission, our limits are a source of strength. An unexpected superpower that we can harness to create an almost limitless feeling of acceptance and freedom.
I realise this might sound like New Age pap. Worse, the gymnastically concocted cop-out of a miserable under-achieving old man. So what if it is.
Even if I remain a serial loser hampered and opiated by self-authored limits, or a no-name pseudo-spiritual wannabe, right now I feel alive. Inspired. Able. Yes, frail and vulnerable and lacking in so many other ways, but okay with that. More than okay. Thankful. Humbled. Liberated.
I could easily undermine this feeling. Clamp down on fluffy thinking. Discipline myself to pursue better, richer, wiser. But why? Elon-approved ‘merit forever’ points? So-called truth? Gosh, there’s a couple of reductive, limiting mantras I could tether myself to; but for now I prefer to argue for my delusions.
Go without. Make do. Be whatever.
PS: Semi-related posts you may enjoy.
1: On going blind.
2: On downsizing to life in a tiny house.
3: On travelling to Jeju-do.
As If You Were Listening 