Exceeding Limits by Shale January 12, 2016 In the summer of 1973, I bought a motorcycle, a Honda CB 450, on which I toured the U.S. from New Orleans to Nashville TN, Lexington KY, St. Louis MO, and Kansas City MO. I never got a foto of me with my bike, so this composite pic made by hand without Photoshop is all I have from that period. I had a friend, Kent in Lawrence County Mississippi who had a bike as well and I often visited him and we rode together around the countryside. One beautiful sunny day we were biking on a country road and I was really enjoying leaning into the curves at a good speed. It was such a nice day for a ride that I did not bother wearing my helmet, letting the wind blow thru my shoulder length hair. Then I was leaning hard into curve when an oncoming truck was coming at me. I had choices, stay leaning and risk getting my head knocked off or straighten up and leave the road. I left the road, jumping the ditch and bouncing on the other side. I remember leaving my bike and flying thru the air. My friend who was behind me said I was doing flips in the air, which I do not remember. All I remember after leaving the bike was crashing and sliding on gravel, luckily not hitting my bare head on anything. And, my first reaction when standing up, scraped and bloody was running back to my bike to assess the damage. Only lost a mirror. Besides learning the value of wearing a helmet even on beautiful nice days and that you cannot safely ride a motorcycle while patting yourself on the back, was a philosophical axiom that I thot was quite clever and original. "You Don't Know Your Limits Until You Exceed Them" (© Shale Stone 1973) However, today on facebook, a friend posted this: “Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.” (Albert Einstein - German Physicist 1879-1955) I went searching the Web just to confirm this quote, which was very similar to mine and that is when I found that Great Minds Think Alike. Seems my axiom was just a natural conclusion that many others have come to over the years before me. "... so long as everything is within your limits, you don't know what is beyond them." (Meher Baba - Indian Spiritual Master 1894-1969) "Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them." (Brendan Francis Behan - Irish Poet/Novelist 1923-1964) "One extends one's limits only by exceeding them." (M. Scott Peck - American Psychiatrist & Author 1936-2005) "The only way to discover the limits of the possible, is to go beyond them into the impossible. " (Arthur C. Clarke - Brit. Sci-Fi Writer 1917-2008) "Only by pressing the limits do you ever find them." (Dr. Joyce Brothers - American Psychologist/Columnist 1927-2013) "One must from time to time attempt things that are beyond one's capacity." (Pierre-Auguste Renoir - French Impressionist Artist 1841-1919) I still like the succinct wording of my own revealed truth and think it might make a good tattoo for my 80th birthday - an actuarial statistical limit which I may or may not exceed.
Being an old motorcycle rider I can appreciate limits when riding. In the early seventies when I was riding dirt bikes I had a used Ossa and a new 250 Yamaha DT2...and I had access to other bikes as I worked at a Yamaha shop. I would ride with a couple friends on weekends for eight hours straight through the woods and fields and was a fair rider. The three of us would constantly push the limits. We used the term "the ten foot gaze" (or maybe twenty foot, I forget) to describe how we'd ride. This involved staring at a spot in front of the motorcycle that was just at the limits of your reaction time. When traveling at speed you had to watch the trail immediately in front of the front wheel at a distance that would allow you to steer clear of oncoming rocks, trees, ruts, and other hazards that would suddenly appear. If you looked too far in the distance you wouldn't see the obstructions right in front of you. If you looked closer you couldn't plan your route through the area you were covering. We found that ten or twenty feet, whatever, was where we could ride the ragged edge of moving as fast as possible without wrecking the bike. This is a very "loose" way of riding. You travel very fast, but one little mistake and down you go. It involved a very light grip on the handlebars and letting the front wheel bounce as it will while still holding it under control. If you tried to correct every little bounce and bump the bike would very quickly crash. It was a floating technique..riding the tiger. You find the limits by pushing them. With motorcycles, in the dirt, you crash a lot.....and that's how you find your limits. But the limits constantly change as you get better or worse, or conditions beyond your control change. So knowing your limits in any endeavor can only be established by pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone. If you're comfortable with what you're doing you're probably not at your upper limit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEwxguHUi_U some limits, are in some sense or another, real, some exist only as we impose them on our own mind. personally i don't believe anyone needs to kill themselves to prove anything, but, when it comes to the universe beyond our individual selves, or even our species or our world, if there are limits to the diversity of existence, we do not yet know them, or even if there are.
