Limits

Last week, I went on a three-day sea kayaking trip for school.  The day before we left, the kids and I piled into a basement classroom to get prepared for kayaking on the ocean, and in doing so we watched a video put forth by the New Zealand Wilderness Somebody-or-other that gave us five rules to follow for a safe outdoorsy trip.  The rules were as follows:

1.  Plan your trip.
2.  Check the weather.
3.  Tell somebody.
4.  Know your limits.
5.  Take sufficient supplies.

Hm, I thought.  Know your limits, huh?

The problem is that I've never been entirely certain how to find my limits.  Sometimes I overestimate myself wildly (when considering how I would fare in a no-holds-barred street brawl, for example, or whether or not I could eat a tire-sized wheel of cheese).  Other times (going up to a boy in a club, making friends), I build boxes of limits around myself until I'm in a cage made entirely of rules and caution and fear.  Healthy limit-setting?  Yeah, that's never been my thing.

So when I saw that rule up there on the screen, I panicked a little bit.  If you know me, you'll know that I'm not the person who leaps at the chance to go on a school sea kayaking trip.  It's not that I didn't want to go on the trip so much as that I was pretty sure I'd be a liability rather than an asset, and who wants to be the one dragging everybody down?  Not me, that's for sure.

But they were super nice about it and they needed a female chaperone, so there I was.  I'd gone to the trip's practice paddle the previous week and kayaked for approximately 1500 meters before deciding that I was going to die and probably should just give up.  The Totally Awesome Other Chaperones running the program, however, refused to entertain the possibility that I was simply done, and when they assumed I was fine to keep paddling, I had no other option than to be fine.

(It did lead to some hilarious exchanges, though.  For example, around the 5 km mark:

Totally Awesome Other Chaperone:  How're you doing, Rebecca?
Me:  Gnnnnerglglssf okay.
TAOC:  I love that smile!
Me:  IT'S A GRIMACE.)

After I'd kayaked for about 7 km, it was time to learn how to crew the rescue boat.  Once in the boat I was fine, and bombing around the lake was the most fun I'd had in ages.  Getting into the boat was another story.  My job was to hold the bow of the boat down into the water, then sling myself quickly over the side once the engine caught and started.  The problem is, I'm short and weak, so rather than vaulting over the side of the boat, I instead found myself largely submerged underneath it, my arms hanging desperately onto a handle on the side as the boat whizzed away and my legs flailed in the water.

The next day I realized that I'd forgotten to a) hydrate and b) use sunscreen, and I ended up having to go home from school because I felt so sick.  So much for being a responsible adult.

All things considered, I was pretty terrified.  And when the "Know Your Limits" rule popped up on the projector screen in that basement classroom, I had a moment of serious self-doubt.  Because honestly, still: what the hell are my limits?

(From an email to Shari:

"I'm going to be such a bother!  And it's too late for me to back out, because I'm really the only female chaperone who would do it, and they're being really nice to me, but I'm actually going to drag everyone back.  *I'm* going to need rescuing, and while I'm being rescued (from something really stupid like flipping my kayak), a student is going to be EATEN by some kind of CHINESE SEA MONSTER and it'll be MY FAULT FOR BEING INCOMPETENT."

From Shari's response to me:

"I want to say helpful things about the kayaking trip but that is exactly the sort of thing that has me paralyzed by anxiety.  You should know that when I read your sentence that included the words CHINESE SEA MONSTER, though, I was somehow convinced that you will come through it just fine.") 

I've always been uncomfortable with the idea of limits in the first place.  I remember the first day of Calculus, my senior year of high school, learning that the mathematical idea of limits involves the concept that you can never reach them.  (I think.  I didn't understand a lot of things in that class properly, so I could be wrong.)  That idea -- that you can't reach a limit, that you can only halve the distance between you and it, and then halve that distance, and then again and again forever and ever -- completely screwed me up.  My linear, concrete brain refused to accept it, and that is the point where I gave up on math.  Better to deal in subjects like history and English, where at least ambiguity shouts its presence rather than sneakily pulling you into the subtle undertow of derivatives and functions.

Maybe it's true, though.  As you think you've reached your limit, your limit has in fact moved, like some sort of rapidly expanding hula hoop around your body.  When you push out your arms to reach it, it stretches out farther, dancing out of your grasp like poor Tantalus's food in the Underworld.

And they're tricky, these limits.  When I did my National Boards, I didn't realize how much it would test me.  It seemed as if it were something that should have easily been within my reach -- after all, to do your Boards you just have to be a reflective teacher, right?  And a decent writer?  But BAM! that year wrung me out but good, and the realization that my limits were drawn closer around my teaching-self than I thought shook me hard.  (Then again, I've spent this year watching from afar as eight of the best teachers I know have gone through their Boards, and they've seemed just as drawn thin as I was.  If I'm in their company, I feel pretty good about that.)

At the same time, I've realized that since I was a child, I have always placed limits on myself -- social, physical, intellectual.  I wrapped myself up in rules until I could barely breathe, let alone enjoy the world.  When (after some fairly intense therapy) I finally saw those rules as they were -- self-imposed limits, not laws of the universe -- I started to break them, slowly, one by one.  I joined a softball team.  I made friends.  I sang karaoke.  I moved to China.  I started working at a school that's demanding in a way I'm totally unused to.

I went on a sea kayaking trip.

And you know what?  Spoiler alert:  it was fine.  It was better than fine, actually:  it was fun.  I rode in the rescue boat the entire first day (six hours on the water, I had my period and I nearly gave myself a kidney stone but it was totally worth it), and the Totally Awesome Other Chaperones let me do the fun kayaking the next day, around where the Great Wall meets the sea and the sky was blue and the water looked like glass.  Once I'd done that bit, I got back in the rescue boat and finished out the day.

That makes this whole thing sound too easy, though, as if the way to keep growing is simply to want to grow.  As if limits are only self-imposed.  As if there aren't real limits on our bodies and powers and abilities.  I can't eat a tire-sized wheel of cheese, though, and I can't beat up Bruce Lee with nothing but a standing lamp.

I still can't get in the damn rescue boat gracefully.  I have to throw my left arm and leg over the side and then sort of flump over, hitting the floor in a pile of limbs.  My knees are banged up like crazy, and I have a ridiculous farmer's tan.

But I drank water.  I put on sunscreen.  I kayaked for 8 km that day, and never felt like dying.

I still don't know what my limit was for this trip.  Originally, I thought it would be getting into the boat.  Then, when I managed to do that, I thought it would be not falling out of the boat.  When I stayed in, I thought if I could just make it 4 km in a kayak, I'd be happy.  When I finally made it 8 km, I ceded the boat to a Totally Awesome Other Chaperone, but I felt upset, somehow, as if I'd let myself down.  I was exhausted when I switched over with the TAOC, and it was probably time for me to be in the rescue boat, but I felt my limit jumping away from me, darting into the future.

And yet, I had a great time.  We ate delicious food and the kids were alternately total pros and completely dysfunctional, both of which were entertaining.  I paddled through water with healthy seaweed gardens, and water filled with empty pasta sauce bottles and random left shoes.  I felt the sun beat on my face as my body grew stronger, and I did not fall behind.  There was a lot of laughter.

Next year, I decided, if they invite me back?  I'll kayak for the entire second day.  Take that, limits.