Margin Room I

High risk living captivates us. It’s the feeling of breathing thin air the first time you hike past 8,000 feet— the cold that rushes past your Gore-Tex when your kayak lifts off the edge of a waterfall and you hope the whole freefall that you raised the bow enough— it’s a rock climber whose silhouette suspends from Red Dihedral in the High Sierras. The saying, ‘living on the edge’, immures this idea of pushing yourself to a level where the difference between defeat or even danger is separated from glory by a single breath. This way of living has always appealed to me. I open my eyes every morning eager to analyze all the good I can compress into one day; I analyze my budget to see how many adventures I can pull from the bottom line, and love diverse experiences. The things we fill our free time with are always worthy pursuits: I never regret the great literature when I make time to read, the dynamic people I have intentional time with, or the classes and walks and community gatherings. As Thomas Aquinas said, “in the pursuit of the end, no limits should be set.” Living at maximum capacity is a life full. Or so it would seem.

A few months ago, my life began to change, slowly at first, but small changes soon became a way of living. I started skipping social obligations and avoiding people on the way to appointments. No longer was there time to savor the simple joys of sleep and food, coffee and periods of relaxation; these became a means to further productivity. Instead of providing my body with nutrients it could sustain itself with, I found myself inhaling caffeine (or worse, energy drinks) to artificially push it through fatigue. It is common that people who deeply appreciate the simple goodness of life can go wrong when they gather too much of it. Just as manna hoarded into baskets goes bad, so too worthy pursuits crammed into day-timers ironically decomposes into a life un-lived. Living at full capacity will inevitably replace enjoyment with duty, and restful awareness with rushed narrowness. There is no margin space in which relationship or quiet learning can be cultivated. Life on the edge has no margin for wonder.

Besides being unfulfilling, living at full capacity is not sustainable. The problem with trying to live continually at a maximum capacity is that when a person is operating at their highest emotional, physical, spiritual, and social abilities, one unforeseen event (also known as life) can effortlessly present a small demand which pushes them over the limit of what they are capable of dealing with. I found this to be true when my schedule would have melt-downs if I got lost reading Emerson even by fifteen extra minutes. Any random serendipity had the potential to thwart all punctuality for the remainder of the day. One slight disagreement became more than I could emotionally deal with. Life on the edge has no margin for error.