BECOMING LIMITLESS
A Life’s Purpose
by Selva Kumar. Cover image by @shots_of_aspartame via Unsplash.
Being human means dealing with limits.
You come contained, but with a yearning
to constantly transcend
the very limits you are bestowed with.
Bestowed
because it’s the very minimum
you’ll have to overcome
in your entire life
if you live it well.
It’s a safety net almost,
till you can launch yourself off of the edge
and fly.
But before you know it,
you allow yourself to be imposed upon
and you agree to live a life
on a straight and narrow path.
You believe you are doing right
by yourself, and a greater force
that will then reward you
for forsaking every other possibility
that could have been your wider
and deeper
experience.
You sacrifice.
You’ve learned quickly enough,
that it is noble to do so.
Saying ‘no’
gets you a ‘yes’
at heaven’s closely guarded gate.
The world applauds your restraint,
but you grow resentment and sow regret
until now, you want to break free
from the very narrative that you bought
wholesale.
Freedom is your life’s calling.
It is life calling you,
like a friend,
to come out and play.
You yearn to journey outward,
hearing that small but persistent voice
from a far-away place.
Yet it never gets closer,
the distance, it seems, is always the same.
It entices,
seduces
but your self-importance locks you down
to live a life of denial,
confident that some sort of merit awaits
at a future time frame
that never seems to come soon enough.
When that perceived time arrives,
you understand the deceit
of well-meaning personalities,
known and unknown,
who never knew any better to begin with.
Heaven must be an empty place, you begin to suspect.
No one ever gets to go there, you believe.
Still, appearances matter,
so you keep it up.
Limits shoot gaping holes in your wings.
Your natural yearnings find ways to compromise,
settle down and grow roots instead.
You hop from one spot to another,
no further than your shadow.
You now shorten your focus,
and pick on what helps you survive.
You merely exist
in the compromised present—
your future so small
that it’s hardly worth your time in effort,
your past,
a wide ocean of regrets.
You look forward to your past
with ‘what could have been’ lenses.
Your time
is limiting.
Everyday life will shackle you to your bedpost,
blanketed by your anxieties
and curled up in your depression.
Your darkened room becomes your safe space,
another illusion
to support your delusion.
Light, your salvation, hurts.
And it hurts like hell.
You scream out loud inside
that there must be more to all of this—
this cannot be it.
The masses throw simplistic solutions at you
that should actually make sense.
It can’t be so difficult, they reason.
And maybe because irritation and frustration
force them to abandon false politeness,
they actually speak the truth—
even if only for selfish reasons.
But to you, all of these truths now seem like lies.
They will never understand,
you find yourself thinking.
And now, in your sad state of assumed lies,
you lie paralysed.
You limit yourself
in an even smaller world.
You need a shrink
because your world
keeps
shrinking.
The more you can consume, the higher your status.
The more you can afford, the more you can do,
the freer you think you feel.
And therein lies the problem—
you think you feel.
In pure feeling there is truth.
Pure feeling is liberation.
It can only be experienced
in the here and now,
the only place and time
where there is real and absolute freedom,
and presence.
Your past and future are limits
and are limited.
Flowing in your presence you are limitless,
your future an invitation into your presence,
and your past becomes your archive
of your limitlessness lived.
You realise you have sought your delusions—
that elusive freedom comes in shiny packaging,
a clever illusion that you are aware is not real
but you don’t want to know or acknowledge it.
I thought that life was about pushing boundaries
and I was almost right.
I've learned that that’s how
you make your limits wider, bigger.
You think you become free,
but all you gain is more room.
A bigger bungalow is just a nicer cage.
Because it turns out
it was always from the same place within.
The distance always seems just as far away
until you slow down,
pause,
and stop–
and then it is just there.
It always was.
All along. Waiting.
It almost comes to you.
Good things come to you
when you know you already have them.
It was never about trying too hard–
to get, to please, to prove.
It was never about caring too much
that you couldn’t care less.
Don’t become careless
and callous.
These are what limit you.
Just be kind.
Firstly to yourself
for you are figuring this out as you go along.
Secondly to others
because you understand they are doing the same.
You know that everyone is trying their best
with the tools that they have at their disposal.
Be patient until they, just like you,
find better ones.
So your limits are necessary.
They’re not where you stop
but where you start.
The sooner you recognise them
the sooner you can begin
to evolve.
What you sense but do not yet see,
is that your limits simply, ultimately,
just don’t exist.
What you now see is limited,
and you believe your limitedness.
But when you believe,
you will see.
It begins with a familiar restlessness
which you recognise as that yearning you abandoned.
And it will all make sense—
when you feel that freedom
when you feel your limitlessness—
—that love and truth can now trust you
to be present in your life.
