Limits: The Power of Societal Obstacles

Society has always felt that it has the right to limit certain people. These limits have been around for thousands of years, making it easier to dismiss the needs of others.

Certain people have been trained to keep their heads down and quiet because society tells them to so it doesn’t have to “deal” with them. By doing this, society ultimately thinks setting limits on the people who “can’t” make any contribution to it will somehow make things easier for them.

However, it’s the opposite. Setting limits on people different from the “norm” is technically discriminatory and can cause more harm than good. People are people regardless of their identity and should be treated as such.

Limiting people based on one’s/society’s perception is not the accurate way to handle human beings, even if it’s thought to be the best thing for them. Nobody truly knows what someone else is capable of.

Why do people automatically put limits on others based on what they look like?

If someone tells others their limits based solely on their appearance, they are missing pieces that make up a much larger picture. Appearances shouldn’t play a factor in whether or not someone is capable of doing whatever it is that they want to do.

Unfortunately, society doesn’t take the time to see a person for who they are and assumes that if people don’t look or sound like an “average” person, they aren’t, but if they do look and sound like the “average” person than they must be average.

Both of these assumptions are extremely wrong and unfair, which brings us to the question: what does “being average” mean? Is there even such a thing?

Society should not be able to decide the limits of an individual or group of people simply because they are different, might need more help, or for some other ridiculous reason. This should go for all people as we are human beings who should and can be able to decide our limitations.

Just because others in a similar situation might not be able to do something doesn’t mean we have to limit everyone else in a similar situation.

There are stereotypes placed upon people with disabilities where just because people have this extra thing about them, it means they’re not human or less than human. Where in all actuality, we are extremely capable of doing anything and everything that everyone else is.

We have one thing that happens to be more prominent than everyone else's. People just don’t know it because not all of us have the tools or the knowledge to advocate for the tools to do so.

The other thing is that we all have that one thing that we love in this world. Because people don’t approve of it, they choose to ignore it or whatever, this means we’re the ones who suffer.

Instead of going after our dreams, we shy away from them because we are told by society or whoever that there are limits to our abilities.

How do we know for a fact if we don't even try? If we only take people's word as to what our limits are, how do we know that they're not leading us astray?