Living with Limitations

I’m approaching senior citizen status. That can be hard to admit for others. But I’m ok with that. As I’d playfully say to my wife, “I’m just 30, and you’re already 47!”

Generally, among my contemporaries, I seem fitter. No maintenance medicines nor any life-threatening illness at all. I can even outrun my teen daughter and young adult kids in a 5k run!

I’m thankful to God for that. But, like every human, I’m not fleshly immortal. Someday I’ll have limitations that age naturally produces.

And thus, the need to step up on qualities necessary for what philosopher-physician Dr. Thomas Browne calls “the long habit of living.”


By thinking loudly on these inevitable limitations of life as years go by, I’m explaining it to my self as well in preparation.

In living with limitations when they come (e.g. aching knees, high blood pressure, diet needs etc.), it’s necessary to confine our plans and works to the “realistic.”

Gerontologist and author Dr. Sherwin Nuland wrote in his book “The Art of Aging: A Doctor’s Prescription for Well-Being:”

“ ... knowing one’s limitations and learning to function within them allows the avoidance of the unmanageable. By doing this, it becomes possible to work most effectively in order to achieve chosen aims, without dispersing energy on what can no longer be achieved and then being forced to deal with thwarting disappointment that necessarily follows.”

Approach living with your limitations of any kind, current or future, with the fine balance and maturity that we all seek for ourselves.