Skirting on Edges

“Monotony skirts the edge of boredom and limits begin to seem like limitations."

– Daniel G. Mason, “Dilemma of American Music, And Other Essays”

Have you viewed the limits in your life as limitations? I have.

Have you looked around your life, looked at your daily list, or simply looked at the weather beyond the window glass and turned sighing while the doors of promise quietly shut, one by one?

Have the limits of the day-to-day determined the course of your life, the quality of your existence or the brilliance of your relationships?

Have you chosen to be steered along by the plodding monotony of your perceived limitations rather than be surprised by your ability to syncopate, to change things up just a little?

When Mary Lennox (The Secret Garden, Burnett) discovered a key that turned the rusted knob sequestered behind tangled vines, she pushed open a door that led to a world of… limitations. Yep. An overgrown mess of a garden, overrun with weeds and plants left to go wild awaited her on the other side of that door. It was work, work and more work. It was labor she was unaccustomed to in the dirt of a subject she knew nothing about.

She was limited by the scope of the reality of the world beyond the silent gate.

She was limited by her size, age, knowledge, experience.

She was limited by what others thought she should, could, and mustn’t do.

She was limited by dawn and sunset.

Yet the invitation, carried in the scent of misted moors and small peat cottage-fires, drew her out of the monotony of the life that was already hers in her uncle’s mansion.

And so, she got her hands dirty.

She made new friends.

She changed a life.

And she changed hers in the process.

What limits are you facing today? What monotonous cacophony is holding you in one place, afraid of the possibilities of your limits? Will they be limitations or a doorway to something that is not yet, but promises to be: beautiful.