Limitations

   Its hard for me to admit my limitations - mostly because we live in a society that equates limitations with shortcomings or weaknesses that need to be pushed past in order to be considered whole and successful. One of my limitations has to do with back pain. There are certain things that I know are not wise for me to do - camping and driving long distances among them. Yet, I wanted to try to push past said limitation in order to go and work at a festival this past week. It only took one day of driving to realize what a foolish plan that was. I know that normally I should only drive six hours in a day (if I'm the driver, I can go longer if I am a passenger) and take many breaks at that, but I decided to attempt seven and a half hours on the way to the festival in order to be better positioned for the drive the following day. Poor, poor choice. By seven hours my back was spasming, my right foot was spasming, and my legs had cramped. I had never had the later two happen before. So on the way home I decided to go at a much slower pace, only doing what I truly could do and taking lots of breaks along the way. The result was feeling much better.
   While on vacation, I stopped at two caverns, both of which warned you not to enter if you had certain physical limitations. Yet people in both of my tour groups pushed through, one definitely going past his healthy limit. What makes us choose to harm our bodies and not honor our limitations? How can we reframe them as something to be embraced instead of something to be conquered?