‘I Am My Limitations’

On Boundaries, Realness, and Identity

1. Introduction

Throughout the history of philosophy, the question “Who am I?” has often been pursued as a search for some essential core—an immutable self hidden behind the flux of experience. Yet when we look closely at what constitutes identity, the search for an essence beyond all conditions reveals instead a pattern of constraints and interactions. In this essay, the druid argues that what we call the “self” is not something that merely has limitations, but is in fact constituted by them. My identity and my sense of realness arise directly from the boundaries that define my experience.

2. The Self as Boundary Effect

We are accustomed to thinking of limitations negatively, as obstacles to overcome. But it is precisely the limitation—finitude, boundedness, partiality—that enables anything to be perceived, recognized, or enacted at all. A useful metaphor is the shape of a vessel: what makes a cup a cup is the contour that excludes the rest of space. Without this contour, there would be no form.

Similarly, the “I” is not a free-floating observer detached from the world. Rather, it emerges as a dynamic after-effect of interactions across the body’s sensory and cognitive boundaries. Consider how perception actually works:

· External Interactions: Each second, the human sensory system receives roughly one billion data-bit strikes—light hitting the retina, sound waves vibrating the ear drum, molecules binding to olfactory receptors.

· Internal Interactions: Meanwhile, inside the nervous system, trillions of data-bit exchanges occur per second—electrochemical impulses, synaptic firings, network synchronizations.

These interactions are not experienced as discrete “bits,” but as continuous, analogue flows. When light from a tree hits my retina, it generates pressure patterns that my visual cortex interprets as the presence of “a tree.” My awareness of the tree arises from the structured constraints of my visual system: the particular wavelengths my cones detect, the temporal resolution of my processing, the neural pathways shaped by evolution and learning.

Example:
If I see a colour that lies beyond the human visible spectrum—infrared or ultraviolet—I see nothing at all. My “I” does not extend there, because my limitations exclude that possibility. My perceptual boundary is the horizon of my reality.

3. The “Am”: The Feeling of Realness

Beyond identity, there is the question of realness—the felt sense that “I am here, now.” This sense is often assumed to be continuous, but in fact arises as an ongoing (though discontinuous) after-effect of boundary interactions:

· Each micro-contact between sensory input and neural processing generates a transient “pulse” of awareness.

· The mind stitches these pulses into the illusion of continuous experience.

· The feeling of presence—*“I am”—*is an emergent property of these countless data-bit strikes occurring across my perceptual and cognitive edges.

Example:
Consider the phenomenon of micro saccades—tiny, involuntary eye movements occurring several times each second. Without them, visual perception fades (a phenomenon called “Troxler fading”). The feeling that the world is “vividly here” depends on continuous micro-interactions. My experience of realness is inseparable from these boundaries and their activity.

Thus, the “am” is not an absolute given, but a dynamic process grounded in limitations:

· Limited bandwidth of perception.

· Limited capacity of working memory.

· Limited range of attention.

· Discrete contact

Remove or radically alter these constraints, and the sense of realness collapses or transforms into something unrecognizable.

4. Limitations as the Ground of Identity and Realness

When we reflect deeply, we find that limitations are not simply external constraints. They are constitutive of everything we call “self”:

1. Identity as Boundary-Effect: My “I” is the shape traced by what I can and cannot process, remember, or sense.

2. Realness as Pressure-Effect: My “am” arises from the pattern of actual impacts across these limitations.

3. Freedom as Situated Movement: Even what we call freedom—choice, imagination, creativity—is only intelligible against a background of constraints. A being without limits could not experience freedom, because nothing would be excluded.

To imagine a self wholly apart from these limitations is to imagine a formless abstraction—an incoherent nothing.

5. Conclusion: I Am My Limitations

If the “I” arises as an ever-changing identifying analogue after-effect of boundary interactions—both external and internal—and the “am” arises as the felt realness of those interactions, then it follows that:

My limitations, my boundary, decide both my identity and my sense of realness.

This is not a lament, but a recognition of what it means to exist at all. Like the vessel shaped by the contours that exclude space, I am not something that merely has limitations. I am my limitations.

6. Epilogue: Reframing Limitation

Rather than seeing limitation as something to be overcome, we might see it as the very condition for meaning and presence. It is precisely because I cannot be everything, everywhere, that I can be something, somewhere.

In this light, limitation becomes a form of gift: the necessary horizon within which experience, identity, and reality unfold.

The Druid’s Contact Realism

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