Tag: limits

The Limits of Openness

The Library of Alexandria.

It was one of the first great wonders of the world.

An impressive structure overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, the library housed a great deal of the world’s written knowledge – all accumulated in the shadow of Alexander the Great’s empire.

For roughly two centuries, hundreds of thousands of works sat within its walls. But then, the Romans besieged Alexandria. And during the mayhem, the library burned to the ground.

All those works were lost forever.

The burning of the Library of Alexandra occurred more than 2000 years ago. And yet, the event still stirs up vivid responses.

Many mourn the loss of knowledge. Others lament the brutality of humankind. Still others daydream about loading up Doc Brown’s DeLorean from Back to the Future, just to ferry all those papyrus scrolls to safety.

And then there’s me. I wonder if the loss of those ancient texts wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

Now, to be clear, I would not classify myself as closed-minded. Quite the opposite.

I know that the burning of the Library of Alexandria was, at best, an unfortunate event. And I understand the implications as well as anyone.

You see, I’ve always been passionate about accumulating information. When I was a toddler, I memorized the various models of cars on the road, reciting my knowledge for all who would listen. When I was a teenager in the pre-Google Maps era, people would call me to ask for directions. And now, as an adult, friends love to tap into my knowledge of sports statistics.

My brain is its own library. And with the Internet era in full force, I can add a new wing to the collection with just a few clicks.

And yet, there are some downsides to this scenario. With so much new information to absorb, and such an eagerness to learn, it’s all too easy for me to get overwhelmed. It’s possible for me to attempt to take in everything — and end up gaining nothing in the process.

This has happened to me before. I’ve gone down research rabbit holes until my brain hurt and I couldn’t see straight. I’ve forgotten to eat, to go to bed, or to get outside and live a bit.

And the inverse has afflicted me as well. I’ve filled bookshelves and digital queues with unviewed materials. All as I’ve waited for there to be enough free time in my life to consume them.

Time provides the limits to my openness. There is only so much of it to go around. And it’s continually getting depleted.

These constraints force me to take in knowledge at a measured pace. And any time I seek to game the system, I find myself paying the price.

Time is undefeated.

This paradox also afflicted the scholars of Alexandria. They too were human. Meaning they too were constrained in terms of information capture.

They didn’t have the capacity to store all the library’s works in their brains. If they had, they could have rebuild the library from the ashes, drafting new papyrus scrolls from memory.

And that, of course, did not happen.

So yes, it’s easy to long for life without the fire. It’s easy to imagine all that information from the Library of Alexandria stored digitally, in the modern day, on some remote server somewhere.

But how much of it would truly be absorbed by the masses? That answer is sure to underwhelm.

I’m writing this article in the heyday of Artificial Intelligence.

In just a few short years, AI buzz has shifted from Predictive Analytics to Machine Learning to Assistants to Agents.

The world’s information has never been easier to access. And for the first time, a significant share of it has been generated by the machines themselves.

(But not this article. Ember Trace is an AI-free column.)

Many have marveled about the possibilities the AI era unlocks. The ability to democratize knowledge and boost productivity — all with reduced effort — seems like something out of a science fiction novel from yesteryear.

And yet, underneath all that hype lies a sobering reality.

You see, for all their power and prowess, machines are built to serve us. Their origin stories are intertwined with our needs. And their outputs are effectively restricted by the boundaries of our comprehension.

There’s only so much that we can take in before the hourglass runs out of sand. And that means there are only so many ways we can make use of our virtual knowledge warriors.

Despite our best efforts to manifest infinite possibilities, we are no less constrained than before.

The limits of openness. They strike again.

Intellectual curiosity.

It’s a mouthful. But one that carries plenty of promise.

Those eager to soak up knowledge, those willing to question the status quo — they’ve changed the world. These renegades have built nations, harnessed new technologies, and inspired many.

Including me.

And the heart of my information capture inclinations lies a passion for intellectual curiosity. I yearn to keep my mind as fit as my body.

Year after year, I’ve remained steadfast in this pursuit. And year after year, I’ve cursed the boundaries of time that got in the way.

But lately, I’ve started to change my tune.

For I now recognize that those boundaries are more like guardrails than straitjackets. They’re meant to protect, rather than restrict.

These limits of openness force me to choose which knowledge to absorb. And they demand that I prioritize information that can be turned to action.

This tradeoff has made me functionally wise. It’s forced me to consider the implications of all I’ve learned. And those implications have benefited those around me.

This is the silver lining the fire of Alexandria. As the great library turned to soot, so did the notion that knowledge could be hoarded and stored in a single location.

Those learnings would need to be socialized instead. They’d need to be dispersed among the populace and put to practical use.

I’m honored to carry on that tradition. And yet, I hope I’m not the only disciple.

An eagerness to learn is a gift. But the limits of openness are a blessing.

Heed both.

Testing the Limits

The sign appeared in the distance. A rush of bright colors emerged from the darkness.

As my SUV got closer, the red and yellow hues came into focus. I saw a large circle with a cartoon beaver head inside it.

I was approaching Buc-ee’s.

Buc-ee’s, for the uninitiated, is part of the Texas Trinity of iconic brands. Buc-ee’s, Whataburger, and H-E-B grocery stores are the three chains most Texans can’t get enough of.

But even in that crowd, Buc-ee’s stands alone. For it reinvented an American tradition – the road trip pit stop.

Such rites of passage had long been unceremonious. You’d pull into a travel center along the highway, use a dingy restroom, fill up your vehicle’s gas tank, and maybe scarf down some greasy fast food. Then you’d be back on your way.

But Buc-ee’s has turned all of this on its head. Its travel centers – often located by the interstate in rural Texas towns – are the size of Walmart supercenters. Dozens and dozens of gas pumps bracket the large edifices, with low fuel prices luring drivers to fuel up.

Inside the travel center is a little bit of everything. Home décor. Buc-ee’s branded apparel. Snacks and drinks. Freshly prepared food. And the world’s cleanest travel center restrooms.

It’s a Disneyfied, Texas-sized travel center experience. And many a traveler just can’t get enough – including me.

Well, most of the time at least.

The illuminated beaver sign got bigger and bigger.

I was nearing the exit now. And I had a decision to make.

Normally, you see, I would stop at this travel center. I had done so two days prior when I was heading in the other direction.

But it was already past 8 in the evening. And I needed to get home as quickly as possible.

After all, I was embarking on a work trip the next morning.

I still needed to unpack the remnants of this trip from my suitcase. Then I needed to repack the bag with fresh clothes — all in time to make it to the airport for my flight.

It was a lot to do. And there was no time to waste.

So, I let the exit pass me by. I watched the beaver sign fade into the rearview.

Hopefully, I don’t regret this, I told myself.

The lines of the interstate are the definition of monotony.

Solid white and yellow strips mark the edges of the roadway. And white dotted lines differentiate the lanes in between.

It’s mesmerizing. Hypnotizing. And potentially dangerous.

I figured this out the hard way a few miles past the Buc-ee’s sign. That’s when the lines on the highway started to fade.

The dotted lines became faded white streaks. The darkness of the Texas night took over the cabin of my SUV. I felt my head leaning forward into the steering wheel.

I was drifting off.

It had been a long time since I’d felt this sensation from the driver’s seat. Maybe a decade or more.

And that prior time was after 12 hours of driving. I just had to make it to the hotel down the road then. No big deal.

This time was different. I hadn’t even been on the road for two hours. And I had more than two hours left to go.

I thought for a moment about doubling back. Of turning around at the next exit and beelining it back to the Buc-ee’s.

But how much would that extend my drive? And how late would I ultimately get back home if I did that?

It was too much for my drowsy brain to process.

So, I kept driving.

In the midst of the faded lines and the all-enveloping darkness, I spotted a sign along the side of the road.

I squinted my weary eyes, reading the words Picnic Area, 1 mile.

Salvation was nigh — if I could reach it.

I struggled my way down the highway, straining to find the exit ramp. Finally, it mercifully appeared.

I followed it off the highway, and I parked in the darkness behind another vehicle. I cut off the engine and turned off my headlights. I made sure to lock the doors, wary of suffering the same fate as Michael Jordan’s father.

Then I fell into a deep slumber. For a while, at least.

You see, the night was cold. And with my car engine turned off, there was nothing to keep that chill from slowly permeating the cabin.

So, after a bit, I felt my legs shaking. Then my arms did the same, followed by my torso.

A jolt of energy rushed through me. I was fully awake now.

I turned my key in the ignition, reading the digital clock on the dashboard.

Twenty minutes had passed. I could still make it home at a decent hour.

I hit the gas pedal and headed to the exit of the picnic area. As I merged onto the interstate, I took stock of my surroundings.

The dotted lines were distinct now. The road signs were clear.

I was going to be fine.

Years have passed since that road trip. And I’ve been up and down that interstate quite a few times since then.

Sometimes, I’ll stop at the Buc-ee’s to grab a bite or use the facilities. Other times I glide by that giant beaver sign at 80 miles an hour.

But no matter which option I choose, I always feel a shiver down my spine about 10 miles later. That Picnic Area, 1 Mile sign always brings it back.

If it hadn’t been there, I might not be here today. For I’d tested the limits of my ability. And I’d nearly lost it all as a result.

I consider all this for a moment or two. I remain in silent repose as the prairie and the cottonwoods pass me by.

Then I move on to the next thought rattling around in my head.

There are still hours to go, after all.

I’m grateful I get to experience them.

Good Fences

Like the wind, she was off.

Freshly released from her leash, our family dog went bounding down the hill and straight into the yard of the house next door.

She was free and exuberant – and a frightening sight to the neighbors.

My father ambled his way into their yard, apologizing profusely as he shepherded the dog back onto our property.

I was young at the time, and I don’t recall much more of this incident. But it’s hard not to recall what was in our backyard the next time I set foot there. Namely, a tall wooden privacy fence hugging the property line.

The days of our dog making a jailbreak were over. And so was the world as I knew it.

Good fences make good neighbors.

That’s about as American a phrase as there is.

We’re a society obsessed with security, with boundaries, with marked territory. We boldly place our stake in the ground, proclaiming to the world what we claim as ours. Then we set up blinds to keep that same world at bay.

There’s no way to fend off all risk, of course. But a good fence can sure help.

There are consequences to all this, of course. When our horizon consists of walls and warnings, we stop engaging with all that lies beyond it.

We see our neighbors less. We rely on them less. We trust them less.

This happened to my family when that wooden fence cropped up on the edge of our yard. The neighbors became ghosts.

So close, yet so far away. It was jarring.

Over time though, I came to embrace this arrangement. I found sanctuary in the quarter-acre of turf my family claimed – and the mechanisms that kept it in place.

Our property. Our land. Our home.

The exclusivity was everything.

The whispers filled the hallways.

Rumors. Gossip. Innuendo about someone conveniently absent from the conversation.

Such were the realities of high school.

But about halfway through my tour of duty, something changed. Websites with names like MySpace and Facebook appeared. And we all flocked to them.

Suddenly, the whispers were old news. Living out in the open on the wild frontier of the Internet, that was the way to go.

We posted too much of our lives there in those early days, and I was no exception. I didn’t always share what was on my mind. But just about everything else had a digital timestamp.

Personal photos. Status updates. Conversations with my social circle.

As I moved off to college and found a new social circle, I was an open book. Literally.

But soon, I found myself pulling back. I posted less, and I carried an air of suspicion about me.

Some of this instinct was literal. I’d caught two young men trying to steal my laptop from my dorm room one day, when I’d left it unattended.

I chased the would-be thieves away empty-handed. But I felt exposed, nonetheless. Exposed in a manner that lingers for the long haul.

Still, this incident only partially explains my decision to fade into the background. There were other factors at play.

Truth be told, I’d come to feel a yearning. A longing in my soul to withdraw. I desired to add mystery to the whispers about me – until there weren’t any whispers at all.

Such was the credo of my introversion. And I was done ignoring it.

So, I steadied the barriers around me. And I piled them higher with each passing day.

These tendencies have only proliferated over time. I remain fiercely independent and loathe to share too much of my journey all that widely. Ember Trace is about as far as I’ll open my book.

Good fences are my companion.

Fences are a hot button issue these days.

Some want them built up — both literally on our nation’s borders, and figuratively around the enclaves that lie within them. Others want to take a bulldozer to barriers, bringing more of us out in the open.

It’s a dueling agenda that’s caused a giant mess.

I don’t profess to have answers for a feasible immigration policy or a more equitable society. But I just might have something for the mess.

The way I see it, this turmoil comes not from the balance of issues themselves. But rather, our interpretation of them.

You see, we tend to pick sides in these grave matters, and countless others. This is our right in a free society, and it shouldn’t raise alarms on its own.

But we fail to put proper boundaries around the positions we take. Instead, we charge into the yard next door with them. We proselytize our views. And we condemn those that don’t conform – sparking divisiveness.

The solution to this conundrum is some good fences. Barriers delineating where our individuality ends, and where another’s begins.

If we erect these structures and abide by them, the vitriol should die down. We might still abhor each other’s views, but we’ll at least be able to share a respectful nod as we pass each other on the street.

And that’s light years from where we are now.

Some years ago, my family ceded my childhood home.

My parents put the property up for sale. They packed up their possessions and moved into a condo in the city.

I had moved away years before. I didn’t pay the decision much mind.

But from time to time, I’ve thought about that wooden fence at the edge of the backyard. And about the incident that led to its existence.

Our first family dog was a bearded collie, full of joy and energy. When we walked her around the neighborhood, she’d tug on the leash with the force of an unruly steer. When winter came, she’d bound through the snow like an antelope.

Still, I’d never seen her run more freely than when she made that run for the yard next door. She was like a wild horse darting across the plains, unbridled and undeterred.

This is the image we seek when we express our individuality. We aim to make the world our oyster, free from the reins of conformity.

But that freedom is a mirage. When we step out from the pack, we must fight for every inch – all while defending ourselves against other doing the same.

Wild horses might run free, but they also must find sustenance and ward off predators. Runaway dogs might find the same challenges and dangers – or worse – as they navigate the jungle of urbanized society.

And we will surely find the same unsavory realities if we don’t mind our fences. We will find ourselves scrapping for survival, with no lane to sustain what we truly desire.

Such are the tradeoffs of individuality. Our views, our goals, and our spoils have limits. Divisiveness is the price we pay for exceeding those limits.

Sturdy barriers can shield us from this fate. They can keep us from crossing the line and sabotaging our own desires. They’re a godsend if we establish them for the right reasons.

Good fences make good neighbors. Let’s mind ours accordingly.

To The Limit

I could barely walk.

Felled by some bad hummus, I struggled to get up the stairs to my apartment.

I fumbled for my keys and unlocked the door, my face flushed and my body shaking from chills.

Once inside, I went straight to bed. But my sickly slumber was quickly interrupted by an ear-splitting headache.

My condition had suppressed my appetite, and now my body was revolting from the malnourishment.

So, I wearily headed to the kitchen and boiled some hot dogs. Those five minutes of cooking time felt like hours. But eventually, I was able to devour the hot dogs before stumbling back to bed.

At some point in the night, my fever broke. Although drenched in sweat, I felt a modicum of relief.

The next morning, I felt right as rain — albeit a bit depleted. I wasn’t about to have hummus again anytime soon, but at least I’d taken care of myself properly while down for the count.

I had a roadmap for the future. But following it would prove to be a challenge.

Know your limits.

This phrase is ubiquitous.

Most often, it refers to a vice — drinking, gambling, or the like — that can destroy us if not followed in moderation.

But it can apply to a much broader set of contexts as well.

I knew my limits that evening I was holed up sick. But there are plenty of times before and after where I thought I knew my limits, only to discover that I was sorely mistaken.

Sometimes, the consequences of this blunder were made plainly evident. I once ended up in the Emergency Room after passing out from heat exhaustion, for instance.

Other times, blunders are only evident in hindsight. Bad decisions that didn’t truly burn me, but easily could have.

In either case, learning my limits has helped me avoid pressing them. When I feel I’m getting relatively close to the edge, I dial back.

Better to live to fight another day than to go too far, is my thinking.

But such a concept comes with its own opportunity costs. Namely, the ability to grow my potential.

No, it might not be smart to test our limits while ill, while inebriated, or while out in the scorching hot sun.

But there are plenty of other times when it’s beneficial to push ourselves. When the challenges in our midst are nothing more than hurdles to clear.

Sure, we might feel some resistance as we level up. And giving in to that resistance might seem natural.

But if we shut it down in those moments, we’ll forever be restricted to what’s comfortable.

It’s far better to embrace what the psychologist Carol Dweck has deemed The Growth Mindset. That is, the willingness to develop our talents and capabilities through hard work, good strategies, and input from others.

Growth mindset means pushing our boundaries, but with an end in mind. And that’s something my limit avoidance strategy fails to account for.

On a sultry summer morning, I joined a group of people for a run.

I was only planning on going three miles, but the group was going 10. I’d never run that far in my life, and I didn’t feel prepared to change that fact on this day. But I didn’t want to lose face either.

And so, I hatched a plan. I would run with the group for a couple of miles, intentionally make a wrong turn, and then backtrack once everyone was out of sight. No harm, no foul.

For a while, my plan seemed ingenious. But then, several runners in front of me made the same wrong turn I was planning on.

Now, there was no losing the group. Worse still, I’d need to hustle to follow the runners who’d strayed from the route with me. If I faded, I’d lose face once again.

I ended up running the full 10 miles that day, fighting through side stitches during the home stretch. It wasn’t a pleasant experience, but it wasn’t a disaster either.

When I recounted the story at a pool party later that day, a friend urged me to sign up for a half marathon.

You’ve already run 10 miles, he said. What’s 3.1 more?

And just like that, my running adventures were underway.

I’ve since completed three half marathons, improving my finishing time in each. I’ve picked up a ton of speed, topping my age bracket in most races I enter and even finishing Top 3 overall for a few. And I’ve made plenty of friends along the way.

None of this would have happened if my plan to ditch that 10-mile run that day had panned out. Fate got in the way of my tentative nature, with the best of results.

I think about this sometimes while running. My stamina has gone way up since that first day. But there’s still a certain point on long training runs where I fade spectacularly. I go from feeling awesome to feeling awful in an instant. And I dial back.

Is this action a reflection of my own prudence? A willingness to pull back before I suffer the consequences of overexertion.

Or is it a mental block I must overcome? Is my body capable of doing far more than I give it credit for?

I believe it’s the latter. But I still haven’t tested that hypothesis.

That’s on me.

It’s time for us to delineate the limits we set. To differentiate the limits that are real from the ones that exist wholly in our minds.

This requires us to take a step back and truly assess the risks of going too far. And then, to consider how likely those are to occur.

If the chances of an adverse outcome are low, we should push ahead — regardless how scary that potential outcome might be. If not, we should be prudent and dial back.

This is not an easy adjustment to make. I know this as much as anyone.

But hard work is still worth doing, and our future depends on it getting done.

So, let’s get to it.

When We Lose the Governor

It was a beautiful Florida day.

Blue skies stretched as far as the eye could see, dotted with puffy white clouds. Sunshine and warmth abounded. The slightest breeze kept things from getting insufferable.

But on this day, I wasn’t on the beach or dining under a palm-lined restaurant patio. Instead, I was behind the wheel of my old Saturn, trekking up the Florida Turnpike from Miami to Orlando.

The route was boring and monotonous. An endless stream of trees and swamps that were occasionally interrupted by suburban neighborhoods.

But as I passed the Fort Pierce interchange, my heart started beating faster.

For I knew what came next. A 40 mile trek across a remote corner of the Everglades.

Between Fort Pierce and Yeehaw Junction, there were almost no distractions. There were hardly any trees. There were few onramps, offramps or curves in the road. And, most importantly, there were no sheriff’s deputies with radar guns looking to make their speeding ticket quota.

I could go as fast as I wanted. So, I pushed the pedal to the floor.

The Saturn accelerated as it roared down a long straightaway bracketed by sawgrass and swamps.

I watched the speedometer gauge on my dashboard move ever more to the right. 85 miles an hour. 90. 95. 100. 105.

But when it hit 107 miles per hour, I felt a jolt. Suddenly, I was traveling at 80 miles an hour again.

The governor had kicked in on my engine. I had hit top speed.

Not the 120 mile per hour clip my speedometer advertised. But not far from it either.

Either way, the experience was truly terrifying.

In the moments after my need-for-speed encounter, my mind was still racing.

Suddenly, the potential consequences of what I had done were clear to me. I recognized that by flooring the gas pedal, I had actually ceded control. My actions had increased the risk of the car rolling over, veering off course or going up in flames.

The governor saved me from all that. And I was truly grateful for it.

In all the years since this incident, I have never tested top-speed in any vehicle I’ve driven. And even as I’ve moved on to vehicles with more powerful engines, I can count on one hand how many times I’ve cracked the 100 mile per hour mark.

The guardrail is there for a reason. Better not to use it as a crutch.

Governors don’t just exist in car engines. (Or as positions in regional politics, for that matter.)

They play a sweeping, yet pivotal role in our society.

Governors are the voices of reason that call to our conscience. They keep us from veering into anarchy.

For many years, a web of institutions has served as our society’s governor. These institutions have included civic bodies, religious establishments and the media.

Each institution has approached rationality in a different way. Civic bodies — such as police and the courts — have spoken to the rule of law. Religious establishments have spoken to the question of morality. And the media have spoken to the obsession with legacy.

No matter how reckless and swashbuckling we got, these institutions have continually provided a line in the sand. Cross it and become an outcast from society. A pariah. A wearer of the Scarlet Letter.

No one wants this outcome. And because of that, the societal governor has been quite effective at putting a lid on extremism.

But recently, that lid has been sent skyward.

Ever wondered what life would look like with no limits?

Look around you. It’s happening now.

Yes, we are in the midst of contentious times. Divisiveness is as high as it’s ever been. Trust in institutions is as low as it’s ever been. And more and more, there is a sense that the guardrails we’ve long heeded need not apply anymore.

Thanks to the growth of the Internet — social networking in particular — we can shroud ourselves in filter bubbles. We can rally behind ever more radical worldviews, casting stones at anyone who dares think differently from us. And we can count on a network of like-minded thinkers to rally around us, fortifying our views.

But what of the old establishment? We can cast stones at them too. We can call the civic bodies corrupt. We can call religious establishments hypocritical. We can call the media “fake news”.

We can, and we do.

Certainly, there is an element of truth to these accusations. Our key societal institutions are far from infallible.

But by painting them with such a broad brush — by undermining them in this fashion —  we remove the governor entirely.

We allow chaos to ensue. And with chaos comes absurdity.

Absurdity like a leading evangelical Christian magazine being branded as offensive for calling the President of the United States immoral.

Sure, the magazine took a controversial stand in an opinion column, calling for the president to be removed from office. But the rebuke of being branded as offensive hardly seems to fit the circumstances. As these words are being written, the president is facing an impeachment trial, and people on both sides of the political spectrum are questioning his morality.

In labeling the president’s actions as immoral, the evangelical magazine was trying to restore reason. To demonstrate where the lines in the sand for acceptable behavior are.

This is well within the scope of expertise for an organization that is built on the issue of morality. It’s within bounds for an entity that focuses upon morality as our one true measuring stick.

Yet, in a world where we’ve lost the governor, even measuring sticks get attacked.

There is seemingly no limit to what we can do or say without getting called to account for our behavior.

And that’s more frightening than feeling the engine lock up on a Florida highway.

It’s time for this madness to stop.

It’s time to bring the governor back into the equation.

We, and we alone, have the power to do this. For we are the ones who defanged the old system in the first place.

Getting this done will take us stepping out of our comfort zone. It will take us shunning our filter bubble and voluntarily putting restraints on ourselves.

This is a big ask. But for the future of society, it’s a worthwhile one. And a necessary one.

We built this monster. The time has come to slay it.