“Americans… resist the very idea of limits, regarding limits of all sorts as temporary and regrettable impositions on our lives. Our national myth is about the endless defiance of limits: opening the western frontier, breaking the speed of sound, dropping people on the moon, discovering ‘cyberspace’ at the very moment when we have filled old-fashioned space with so much junk that we can barely move. We refuse to take no for an answer.<\/p>\n
“Despite the American myth, I cannot be or do whatever I desire… there are some roles and relationships in which we thrive and others in which we wither and die.<\/p>\n
“If I try to be or do something noble that has nothing to do with who I am, I may look good to others and to myself for a while. But the fact that I am exceeding my limits will eventually have consequences. I will distort myself, the other, and our relationship \u2014 and may end up doing more damage than if I had never set out to do this particular ‘good’.”<\/p>\n
-Parker Palmer (Let Your Life Speak<\/em>, p.42-46)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Americans… resist the very idea of limits, regarding limits of all sorts as temporary and regrettable impositions on our lives. Our national myth is about the endless defiance of limits: opening the western frontier, breaking the speed of sound, dropping people on the moon, discovering ‘cyberspace’ at the very moment when we have filled old-fashioned … <\/p>\n