Some of the world’s greatest innovations were borne out of necessity and limited resources.
Limitations do not have to be seen as restrictive boundaries within which we are stuck and unable to escape. With a shift in mindset, away from hopelessness and toward creative solutions, our limitations, whether they be time, tools, or resources, actually become our muse, the source from which our inspiration arises. By accepting our limitations, we give ourselves permission to harness them to our advantage instead of being bound by them to our detriment.
When necessity demands that we act, either for our physical survival or our existential fulfillment, we must take stock of the time, tools, and resources we have at our disposal and determine how to best use these to achieve our goals. What we have may be all that we get. This may be the palette from which we must paint our masterpiece.
In reality, the difference between a novice and an expert is not the materials one or the other has at his or her disposal, but the way that they are utilized and to what effect. The dividing line between success and failure is drawn by creativity. It is our ability to bring creative solutions to the table and to execute them in spite of our limitations, whether natural or circumstantial, that determines our usefulness in service to both our community and to our ideas themselves.
Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.
Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Body and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
All photos by Robert Van Valkenburgh unless otherwise noted.
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Within us, we each have a different capacity for kindness. There is a maximum degree to which we can focus our mental-emotional energy on the well-being of others before we overextend ourselves and burn out. Being aware of this capacity, and its edges, is an essential aspect of self-awareness.
We owe it to ourselves, and those we are meant to serve, to discover the full depth of this capacity. To live beneath this capacity is to do the world and ourselves a grave injustice. It means not living up to our potential to be loving, helpful, and useful.
Living beyond this capacity, however, is just as tragic as living beneath it. Living beyond our capacity for kindness means that we give so much of ourselves to others that we have nothing left, nothing left for ourselves or for those who may matter most. When we cross our own boundaries, extending ourselves beyond the limits of what is healthy, we are no longer able to be kind anyway, and it is all for naught.
Meditations on God 