In this chapter Parker start explaining how he wanted a deeper congruence between his inner and outer life. He talked received tips from a Quaker counselor. Then when he is describing most of his frustrations he said something that captures my attention that is: “We can learn as much about our nature by running into our limits as by experiencing our potentials”



I believe in this word because we have to recognize our limits but we didn’t know what are our limits after we experiment our potentials. Sometimes in life I intend to do many things and then I finished frustrated at failing to reach them all. But at the end of that situation I try to analyze what I do wrong and looking what are the limits that I have to accomplish things not to be frustrated of them but to enjoy the capacity that I already have.

 

Parker also described that “ It is important to distinguish between two kinds of limitations: those that come with selfhood and those that are imposed by people or political forces hell-bent on keeping us in our place.“

I think that the constraints with which we deal are mainly what we ourselves fight with. In my life sometimes I limit myself because of a negative attitude and because of laziness and bad thoughts that I can’t do what I’ve dream and propose to myself.

 

During Parker´s tenure as dean at Pendle Hill, he was offered the opportunity to become the president of a small educational institution. He decided to have a meeting with some Quakers in where they asked some easy questions to help him with his dilemma of taking this new job. All is running easily until they asked the next question: "What would you like most about being a president?" For him is really difficult to respond this question and at the end he concluded that he wanted to be president because he want to see her name in the paper and the title of President in it. All is about his ego than with the ecology of his life.



And here is another quote that complete his feelings about this kind of ego:
If I try to be or do something noble that has nothing to do with who I am, I may look good to others and to myself for a while. But the fact that I am exceeding my limits will eventually have consequences. I will distort myself, the other, and our relationship-and may end up doing more damage than if I had never set out to do this particular "good."

 

I share with Parker this kind of thought and of feelings because sometimes I only wanted to study and have this pressure of the university to have a college degree that can demonstrate to my parents, friends etc. that I do it. Instead of enjoy at much as I can with passion what I’m doing. I have to learn to distinguish what I really want to do with passion and that brings me more opportunities to develop my personal projects and the first big project in my life that is my family.



Other quote that impact myself is this one because it talked about giving to the poor that is one of the things that I enjoy doing in my life. It is not only giving them but also teaching them how to be productive and how they can go out of poverty by their own effort. "Do not give to the poor expecting to get their gratitude so that you can feel good about yourself. If you do, your giving will be thin and short-lived, and that is not what the poor need; it will only impoverish them further. Give only if you have something you must give; give only if you are someone for whom giving is its own reward." I have to question myself all the time about if what I´m doing is to fulfill my own ego or it is because I really enjoy it.

 

When we reach the limits of our own capacity to love, community means trusting that someone else will be available to the person in need. The attempt to live by the reality of our own nature, which means our limits as well as our potentials, is a profoundly moral regimen. This moral regimen is the one that we have to take care of having to analyze very day what our potentials and limits are.

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We must honor our limitations in ways that do not distort our nature, and we must trust and use our gifts in ways that fulfill the potential God gave us. This part of the chapter 3 is the one that I want to have in mind during all my life because we can distort our nature by our limitations or we can create limitations that we really are doesn't having. Instead we have to fulfill everyday with the potential that God gives to us since we born to develop the most amazing things that we can in this world.