29 November

The limit, in maths, is I think also an interesting part of life. A lot of our behaviour is governed by limits. Take drinking, people drink with an implicit sense of what the limit would be, including alcoholics, and it’s that limit which actually drives the behaviour. From the very first drink the ‘last drink’ is what shapes how we drink - think of it for yourself, how you evaluate your drinking according to that implicit sense of what would be ‘too much’, and you do that from the very first sip. Or the origins of money and barter, it’s not as is often said about figuring out equivalences (how many chickens for how much potato, or how much is a fair amount of money for something), it’s about each side using their own sense of what would be the limit beyond which they would no longer be happy to exchange. Spending too much tips you over into a new dangerous territory, but that limit is there in every decision you make. In relationships there are always words which, if they’re said, take you beyond the limit of that relationship and into new territory. Words that can harm the relationship or escalate it. Some words you know will possibly lead to a break up, others will take a friendship and make it suddenly something more serious. Those limits are right there in your thinking in each moment, we don’t wait until we’re close to the limit to start thinking about it, it shapes our behaviour at every moment.