The idea that we can eventually overcome everything in our personality is idealistic. Some of what we call limitations are simply part of the way we are built and the way we have come to find meaning in life. The question is not always how to become free of them, but whether we can recognize them clearly enough to live well within them.
For example, I may know that I need structure and responsibility in order to bring meaning into my life. That is a limitation. It means that effort will always be part of my experience. I cannot simply move freely through life, without structure, and expect meaning to appear. But this limitation may also be where I have come to learn and experience to thrive. There is something paradoxical about the idea that freedom means becoming free of the very conditions that make us who we are. If structure gives my life form, responsibility gives me direction and effort allows me to bring something into being, then being free of these things would not necessarily make me freer. It might simply leave me without the conditions through which I am able to live meaningfully. Perhaps becoming ourselves is not about overcoming every limitation, but about discovering which limitations are actually part of our nature, which ones have been created by fear or adaptation, and how we can live more freely within the ones that remain. Freedom does not always mean having no limitations. Sometimes it means no longer fighting the ones we cannot and do not need to overcome.
By Ariel Karmeli · October 2026
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