Children are often told that they can be anything when they grow up. They’re encouraged to dream big and believe in themselves—and for good reason. There are few things more tragic for a parent than to see their children fall short of their potential.
But what is potential? How can it be identified? More importantly, how can it be reached?
In 2012 Josh Parnell, a brilliant student at Stanford University, began a Kickstarter for an ambitious space-sim game called Limit Theory. He’d spent several years researching and experimenting with procedural generation in game design with considerable success in artificial environments, AI behaviors, and even music composition. His idea was to create a game in which every player’s experience was unique because the planets, the NPCs (non-playable characters), and even the music was generated on the fly by the computer. Support for the project was phenomenal—meeting the original goal in only a week and exceeding three-times the goal by the end of the one month pledge drive. Given that success, he did what any sensible person would do: drop out of school and devote himself full-time to the development of the project.
When asked about the name he’d chosen for the game, he loved to talk about his personal philosophy, something he called “the theory of non-existence of external limitation”, or “Limit Theory” for short. In essence, he argued that no force outside of a person (circumstances, finances, social standing) was insurmountable—that, in fact, the only thing that limits anyone is their own belief about themselves and their limits. In other words, if you just try hard enough, believe in yourself enough, do enough research, spend enough time, etc, you can do anything.
Josh brought this philosophy with him as he approached the process of game development and would post on his website almost daily about his progress on the game, routinely including philosophical commentary. At the time I encountered his work, I was partway through college and while I was at least passingly interested in the game, I was far more intrigued by his thoughts on this subject. I have always wanted to consider myself a renaissance man—someone with a diverse set of skills and an eclectic mix of interests—and the belief that I could take that anywhere I could imagine was extremely appealing. I wanted to believe I could be a great writer. As I was a Biochemistry major at the time, I wanted to believe I could be a great scientist. I minored in Music Composition, and I wanted to believe I could compose a symphony someday. I met my wife around that time, and I wanted to be a good husband and a father. Most importantly, I wanted to believe I could do all of these things at the same time, during the same life.
For a while, it looked possible. Josh kept making progress. His programming was brilliant. His philosophy was brilliant. He invented his own programing language to improve the efficiency of his program. He invented his own engine in which the game would run. He released monthly videos demonstrating the systems he’d been working on and the game was looking like it would be everything he’d promised. Not only something fun to play, but a proof of Limit Theory. If he could put his mind to that task, create a world, create music, create a hundred million stories for players to experience—and all of that by himself? What was stopping me from achieving what I wanted in life? It was all so clear. The only thing holding me back was me. I just had to be stronger. Work harder. Be more disciplined. It could all be mine. I could be everything and do everything, all by myself.
And then he disappeared.
Months went by. There were no updates to his blog. No videos demonstrating his latest progress. The forums were alight with theories. Had he died? Gotten in a car accident? Been sued?
The months continued to crawl by and still there was silence.
Finally, after 7 months, he reappeared to make a post explaining what had happened. Apparently despite appearances, development was not going as well as he had hoped. During the last few months that he’d been updating us, the program had slowly transitioned out of a scope that he could deal with. Every time he fixed an issue, three more came up. Every improvement he made came with new drawbacks, and the more he worked on it the more he realized that he could not, as one person, understand the entirety of what he had to do. As he described it, there is a point for every programmer—a certain number of lines of code—over which they can no longer fully grasp what they are dealing with. For him, this was around 100,000 lines of code, and every bit that he worked on after crossing that line seemed to do as much harm as it did good.
In essence, he had found his limit. An external limit, so to speak, which he could not push past no matter how hard he worked or how much he fought it. Confronted with this realization, and given its total opposition to his most fundamental philosophical axiom, he had suffered a massive mental breakdown and had been hospitalized for months. In the end, he felt compelled to completely abandon the project and after several years of promising, he released the source code to the public in case there was someone else out there who might be able to succeed where he had failed.
So where did that leave me? Where did that leave Limit Theory? Josh was a genius, but he wasn’t a god. And, like all hubris, confusing the two had had dire consequences.
I am only human.
It sounds stupid, just saying it. But it’s something I have to remind myself about. Every time I wish that I could do one more thing—reach one higher peak; achieve more than I am—I have to ask myself: Can I actually do that? Should I actually try? What will be the cost? What do I have to gain? Will I like who I am when it is over?
If I can’t achieve everything, then what can I achieve? How can I know? How can I be sure? What if I fail? What if I try to do too much? What if I achieve too little? What is my potential?
Where are my limits?
I think this is the critical question. In my last post, I talked about the setting of goals and what it means for them to be good or bad. Most people have different goals, and different sorts of goals will be good or bad for different people. Different people have different limits—not only in terms of type, but in terms of dimension. We each only have so much time in a day. So much money to invest. So much patience. So much brainpower to work with. So much bandwidth to devote.
Every day, we split our attention between dozens of different goals, choosing which matters most to us, which will be the most gratifying to achieve. For some people, goals as simple as “sleep more” or “eat less” can have monumental impacts on their quality of life. For others, reaching for intellectual fulfillment or athletic prowess can form the basis for hobbies or careers, filling their lives with passion and meaning. We cannot judge ourselves based on what others do, as no one else is in the same situation as we are. We all have our gifts. We all have our background. We all have our philosophies and our foibles.
It all comes back to limits. If we all have them, and they are different for each of us, how can we know what a good goal is? If we aim too high, we may burn ourselves out. If we aim too low, we’ve left some unknown quantity of the satisfaction of life on the table. If only we knew our limits. If only we could aim directly at them—achieve in exactness our full potential.
It’s not so easy.
To some degree, every one of us goes through life groping in the dark, trying to figure out where to go and what to do. We feel out our surroundings with hands outstretched, finding walls to go around, doors to go through, and every once and a while we trip on unexpected obstacles. Finding our limits can be no different. The only way to know where they are is to test them. Every step we take without crashing into our limit is a step we move closer to our potential. And until we reach it, until we brush it with our fingertips or whack our foreheads into it, we can’t be sure we’re doing all we can.
The best I can figure, that’s exactly what we have to do. If we want to reach our potential, we have to aim high. We have to dream. We have to hope. We have to put our faith into every blind step, knowing full well we’re going to crash into something at some point. It’s only natural—a necessary part of the process—and as such there is no need to be embarrassed. No need to apologize. And, most importantly, no need to rage against the nature of its existence. Burn-out can be devastating if it’s ignored, but if you recognize it for what it is and use it to inform how you set your goals and how to proceed, it can be a powerful tool for the betterment of your mental health.
If you know you are doing everything you can—if you know that you are achieving your full potential—what more can you hope for? All any of us can do is try to live our best life. Be the best person that we can be. Do the most that we can do.
Are you ready to find your limits?
Great post!
Thank you for introducing me to the dramatic saga of Limit Theory!
I love this post so much, and am especially haunted by the line, ‘will I like who I am when it’s over?’ Oof. So so good.