Know Your Limitations

An unexpected lesson from the American Heart Association

Welcome to Pocketful of Prose, a community for sharing stories. I’m so grateful to all of you for tuning into my little pocket of the world. This week, Pocketful of Prose reached 1,000 readers, and my heart is still flying on the wings of this gift. Speaking of flying, I am currently at the MSP airport, on a long layover, waiting for a plane to take me to New York. I am going to try recording this week’s pocket in the airport and see how that goes. Liz Gilbert did it last week on Letters to Love, so why not?

Without further ado, today’s pocket.

Dan and I took a class to renew our CPR certification this week. We needed to do this to renew our foster license. We are currently not fostering anyone, but we want to be able to offer respite to other foster families, and we want to keep our license active if at some point in the future we become more open to trying again. Our family, especially, our two kids, are still healing from losing our last placement, so we shall see.

But this openness is how we found ourselves in a small room on the first sunny, warm Saturday of the year with a group of seven or eight other people, most of whom had performed CPR on an actual person before. The instructor was kind. He was a retired, volunteer firefighter in his seventh decade of life, and he was giving up his Saturday to teach us something he believed in. His instructions were clear, and we got to practice on cool dolls that lit up when you performed CPR. When we began said practice, my doll didn’t light up at all. According to Mike, our instructor, it was supposed to light up even if you are doing it wrong, red if you are not pressing hard enough and orange if your compressions are too fast, so when my doll wasn’t lighting up at all, I thought it might be broken. I raised my hand, and Mike came over. He started doing compressions, and the doll lit right up. I was getting it so wrong, the doll didn’t even register that I was performing CPR. I was not off to the best start.

At the end of the three-and-a-half-hour class, participants take a written test to show their skills. Mike told us the test was easy, and that we should all do fine. After my experience with the doll, I was wary of this reassurance, but I wasn’t too worried. I have always been good at taking tests. When we finished our tests, Mike told us that we would be grading them ourselves.

“Question One is C,” Mike said. I have no idea if the answer to question one was C. I am making this up, as one day you might find yourself taking the CPR skills test, and I don’t want to be accused of cheating. To be fair, if you are considering cheating, you should probably cheat off of someone else.

I got the first question wrong. Again, not off to the best start. Number two, A. Phew, got that right! Number Three, D. Got that also. (Again, randomly making up numbers, so don’t come after me Red Cross!) I got a few more right, but I also got a few more wrong. I was starting to sweat about how many I was allowed to get wrong and still get my certificate. When we had finished grading our papers, Mike told us that if we got more than four wrong, we would need to have a father son talk with him. I am not a father or a son, and I definitely did not want to have this talk. Fortunately, I got exactly four wrong, sparing myself a public shaming. (I feel I must say here that had I got five wrong, I don’t actually think Mike would have shamed me. He was a very nice man.)

After we finished going over all of the answers, everyone else was packing up their stuff, eager to get back to their Saturday, and the promise of a warm afternoon but I stayed in my seat staring at my paper. I started flipping back through the test to see which questions I got wrong. Dan came over and said, “Did you get some wrong?” I nodded. I didn’t know all the answers on the test, but I knew before he said anything that my husband had known all the answers, and I knew he would tease me about it. “It’s okay,” Dan said. “Not everyone can get a perfect score.”

The questions I got wrong had a pattern to them. They involved numbers. I don’t like numbers. Don’t get me wrong, it is obviously important for me to know that I need to give thirty compressions for two breaths, but I was saving the small capacity my brain had for numbers to remember this compression rate. I wasn’t concerned with how many beats for minute I should apply these compressions. My plan, if I ever found myself in a situation that required CPR, was just to sing “Staying Alive,” which I had learned by watching an episode of The Office. It probably does not surprise you that my song choice was not a question on the test, but I still felt that my plan was solid.

Another question I got wrong was about working as a team. I can’t remember how this question was worded. Dan was a little impatient with my post-test reflection. Perhaps you caught the details earlier that the class was three and a half hours long and on a Saturday. He was giving me strong Why are we still here? vibes, and by that, I mean he was asking me, “Why are we still here?”

Before Dan managed to pull me out of there, I learned that the answer to one of the questions I missed was know your limitations. I wasn’t super surprised that I got this question wrong. I don’t like putting limits on myself or others. Yet, according to the American Heart Association, sometimes not recognizing your limits can put you or others in danger.

I mentioned in a previous post how a poem that Liz Gilbert wrote is really sticking with me. The poem is called “Simple,” and she asks “tell me again why you’re so reluctant to be simple? Why you would rather hustle than flow?”

This hustle for worthiness is ingrained in me. When I was in high school, I was a super student, hence my dismay at my mediocre at best CPR test. Being an A student was a part of my identity. Not only was I at the top of my class, but I was also treasurer of National Honors Society, captain of the tennis team and a member of like ten different clubs. The thing is though I wasn’t participating in those clubs because they brought me joy. I was hustling for my college application. When I got to college, I was so burned out, I didn’t want to join anything.

As a parent, I sometimes find myself reverting back to this value system, of a world that requires hustle. In those moments, I wonder if Anna should be more involved at her school. This is a question I sometimes pose to her in one form or another. On other days, though, better days, I breathe and remember my full story, and the side effects I experienced from a lack of limits. Anna’s focus is narrower, but she really loves the things she chooses to do. She refuses to just go through the motions. She doesn’t need to hustle for her worthiness. She knows she is inherently worthy.

I feel sad for my high school self. I wish I had spent more time discovering things I loved rather than chasing things I thought would push me forward. It wasn’t all bad. I did love tennis, and I loved my friends. And in college, I eased into making choices and doing things I wanted to do. I tried things. I went water skiing. I had a radio show. I joined a Christian group and sang in the church choir. I went on a mission trip to Belize. I spent a lot of time just exploring the city and being silly. I still got good grades.

Since high school, I’ve learned to let go of the hustle… a little, but my reaction to my CPR test results reminds me that I’m still hustling hard. Choosing to flow rather than hustle doesn’t come naturally to me. It is something I have to practice. I want to flow like the river, but for me, flowing takes effort. For me, to flow is to swim upstream.

On my last day in Wisconsin last week, on my way from Madison to O’Hare, I had a little time, and so I went to a park my brother-in-law recommended in Milwaukee. Seabass had also given me instructions to go to Milwaukee to see the Bucks play. Much to Seabass’ disappointment, I did not make it to a Bucks game, but I did make it to the beach.

Grant Park runs along the shoreline of Lake Michigan, and it is breathtaking. Everything was so green, and the trees were full of songbirds. It had been chilly over the weekend on each of the hikes we took, but the morning I visited Grant Park was warm, and I was able to take off my coat to walk in the sun. When I arrived at the park, I wasn’t paying much attention to the trails as I desperately needed a bathroom. Once I sorted that, I parked and started walking along the trail. I wanted to walk along the beach, but the beach was a good, again not good with numbers, 500 feet, 1,000 feet, a lot of feet below me.

Come on number people, how many feet?

I desperately wanted to get to the beach, but I couldn’t see an easy access point. I started to go down a steep, muddy trail, if you could call it a trail. I had my hiking boots on which were perfect for the occasion, but I wasn’t sure how airline security would feel about me sending my giant blobs of mud through their machines. I also wasn’t 100 percent sure that I could access the beach safely from the steep trail. I wasn’t trying to break something, but again, I don’t like limiting myself, so I continued. I really wanted to be on the beach. I managed to get about halfway down the hill without incident, though at one point, I did slide through the mud and the only thing that saved me from barreling down the side of the cliff was that I caught myself on a tree. I reached a point though where there was a giant drop off that was not passable unless you had wings, and even I recognize my limits when it comes to the ability to fly.

I tried again on another trail, but the same thing happened. I passed a few people as I walked along the trail, but I didn’t even consider asking them for help. I desperately wanted to get to the beach, but I didn’t want to seem like I didn’t know what I was doing, even though I clearly didn’t know what I was doing. I also didn’t want to be told there was no beach access because I don’t know if you know this about me, but I don’t like limits.

I kept walking along the trail, and it wasn’t long before I came to a long set of stairs, a clear access point to the beach for me and everyone else. I could walk right next to the lake without hurtling myself down the mountain.

I also got my CPR certification card even though I didn’t get a perfect score.

Some situations don’t require as much hustle as we think.

That being said, if you find yourself in need of life-saving emergency care, I might not be your gal.

I’m learning to know my limitations.

Please join us for some conversation in the comments. What resonates with you today? What is your relationship to hustle culture? Tell us about a time you learned something through failure.