“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
-Theodore Roosevelt
In a perfect world, we would all live the way we wanted to and nobody would get in the way. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as perfect and people are going to be getting in your way all of your life. There are many outside factors caused by other people in your life that are going to affect who you are and the things you do, whether you realize they are doing it or not. Teddy Roosevelt’s quote above is one that inspires me because it shows that by accepting the presence of these outside factors, you can work with them to become who you want to be, rather than letting them control you.
Some of you may have no idea what I’m talking about and think that you have complete control over your life. However, the truth is that nobody really does. I believe that the most important thing is to recognize these limiting factors in your life so that you can work with them, not necessarily overcome them, to be and do what you want.
As a teenage girl growing up in a safe and somewhat wealthy community, the limiting factors I've experienced in my life so far may only be as big as social stereotypes within my school; but even the littlest limitations are important to notice. Identifying and dealing with these immature preconceived notions high school students have of one another is good practice for handling more significant limitations the future may bring.
My goal for this blog is to point out these limiting factors in different works of literature, news stories, music, and my own life, so that I can make clearer the extent to which our identity and actions are limited by others. As you can see from the title of the blog, which is a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson, I don’t see limitations as something you should fight, but something that you should accept and work through. As strong as we may be, everybody has limits and we can't always expect to overcome them. My goal for you is to pay attention to the different types of limiting factors present in society and see if any of them apply to your own life. If you can do this, you will be one step closer to being a freer person. Even if you find that the constraints I point out don’t apply to your own life, be conscious of them, because you never know if you might be the one limiting somebody else. So, join me in my quest to discover the extent to which we are limited by those around us so that we can work together to live a little more freely.
