Options and Limits and Bears, Oh My!

Limits are like options. Everyone and everything has one, as long as you're looking for it. Sometimes the limit is the sky. Sometimes, it's 3pm, or the second to last slice of German chocolate cake. Or the first grammatical error in a text from someone new. But whatever that limit is, it's there.

The thing about options and limits is that even though they're always there, sometimes they become more, or less, apparent based on where you are (physically, emotionally, even depending on the books you’re reading, the shows you’re watching, or the music you’re listening to). Options grow and shrink, just like limits.

When I was traveling with nothing but [a limited supply of] savings, a backpack [a limit in and of itself], and as much rice and oatmeal as I could buy and carry along with my backpack [very limited], my options were seemingly endless. I could go anywhere, so I did. I was bound only by my own desires. My limits evinced themselves only if I chose an option without thinking it through. That’s the catch with options: they always lead somewhere. But even then, because I felt that my options were so lush, the limits I would reach never really stopped me from doing anything.

Now that I’m home and working and “contributing to society,” I feel like I have fewer and fewer options available to me, even though I'm ostensibly shrinking my limitations with steady income and my own apartment and a fridge I can stock. But I can’t wake up one day and decide I’d rather just sit in the sand or eat my way through Hell’s Kitchen instead of go to work. I can’t stay up until sunrise because I’m in the mood. I can’t use my rent money to travel to and from some place new.

And my limits have become more and more clear to me, too. I can only stay up until 1 or 2am without feeling like I’m ready to collapse. I no longer find getting squished into a rush hour subway car to be “an experience.” Some jokes have even started to piss me off. I now know that living with some people is a fate worse than death. I’ve gotten to know many of my limits pretty intimately, and they've started to make me stop and think.

So now I wonder: are my limits shrinking because I’m now fully entrenched in “The Grind?” Or is it the lens with which I’m looking at things? Is it New York? Is it money? The people I surround myself with? Where do options come from? Where do they go?