My Statue of Limitations
—by Raymond Brimble
This little statue of a confused, and possibly belligerent, angel sits in my home library and has scared the dickens out of my kids for years. It’s a study in contrasts. One does not expect an angel to be so disheveled. It looks as if he is answering your prayer by saying, "Buddy, you are kinda screwed here. Nothing I can do. Get back in your lane and for God’s sake, don't try that again.”
This is my "Statue of Limitations."
Limitations are strange things, at once defining boundaries which might be exceeded while at the same time corralling us in. How can something be both? Mainly because limitations tend to be artificial constructs, products of our own minds and spirits. While it is true that almost nothing is "unlimited", it is equally true that many limits are self-imposed. My Statue of Limitations reminds me of the latter.
Human beings are products of a million years of species evolution in which we learned to overcome obstacles to our survival by recognizing patterns. We are the best pattern-finding species on the planet, and have thus risen to the top of food chain. The downside of our super power is that we find comfort in old patterns in the form of self-imposed limitations, even when there are no natural barriers. Thus, the very skill which helped our ancestors identify the cougar sneaking up on them also causes us to react to less dangerous stimulus as if it’s that same cougar.
We seek the familiar in pattern, and our minds and hormones sometimes react according to instinct rather than reality or possibility.
My Statue of Limitations is a naysayer. His speciality is to tell it to me “like it is” to save me from putting in all that work only to discover something different. This is super easy to accept. I don't have to think. The future is always a repetition of the past. I am a product of my environment. I am just like my father. I am so, so PREDICTABLE. Statue of Limitations mumbles, “You have these limitations, son, just accept them, and get on with your life.
This is the gospel as preached by my cockeyed angel. Perhaps he is an expert predictor of patterns, but he does not know how to see things any other way. So, the thing that pisses him off the most is when something does not go as the pattern predicts.
The truth of the matter is: it happens all the time. Things don't always go down the path of least resistance—the most obvious, the most likely. The fix is not always in. The oddsmakers get it wrong more than you know.
Look again at this angel. Peer into his eyes. What do you see? Fear! The Statue of Limitations most fears not knowing, not correctly predicting, not having a worn dog-trail to follow. He preaches that you will be lost if you do not know your limits, but he is the most lost amongst us. He cannot proceed without his map, and his map may be hopelessly outdated. Perhaps yours is too?