Those who know me well know I don’t do things by half-measures. If I break a bone, I really break it: In 2009, on my freakin’ birthday, I shattered my right proximal humerus into four big pieces and several small pieces, and shredded the bicep enough that I had to have donor tissue implanted, along with a plate and pins.

I know, that’s not how you’re supposed to shred muscle.

This time, on Dec. 1, 2024, I broke and dislocated my left wrist and elbow, requiring a new metal ulna and elbow, exterior pins on the interior wrist, and a plate over my wrist and hand.

The plate came out last month, and I finally have a little movement in the wrist, so I can drive again, and do some other things, within limits.

Thing is, I tend to forget my limits, and I decided last week to finally deal with a tree I’d gotten, along with some purple coneflowers provided by Nate and Phyllis Bell (longtime readers may remember I took him to task a little over an insensitive tweet he made in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing; he’s changed a lot since then, definitely for the better, and I’m glad to be Facebook friends with him).

While I didn’t actually lift more than 20 pounds (my limit per my orthopedist), dealing with bags of soil, repetitive motion and me just being an idiot (we all are at times) resulted in a strained wrist, which I rested most of the weekend. As I type this (much more slowly than usual), I’m still feeling pain and know that this week’s occupational therapy sessions will be doozies (the first one on Monday certainly was, and after my Tuesday afternoon of overdoing it a bit at Lowe’s, Wednesday is sure to be “fun,” so I’ll definitely be getting pizza after).

Heck, the lesson of both of those breaks was to know my limits: In both cases, I was carrying too much at once, which makes it much easier to lose your balance if something shifts or the ground is uneven.

I know my limitations, such as a sense of perfectionism that doesn’t allow me to start a task if I know I can’t do it right and completely the first time, no matter how badly it needs to be done (partially because I abhor duplicating work … why start if you’ll just have to redo what you already did?). Knowing my limits should stand me in good stead, according to psychologists, even though I will still blow right past them at times. That’s why my mom would often go out and drag me back into her house if I stayed outside working in the garden too long when I visited.

Too many of us scoff at limits, and not just our physical (or emotional) ones. We’ve forgotten or just tossed aside those societal rules (like considering the effects of our actions on others before we act) that kept us running fairly smoothly, as well as re-interpreted the Constitution and laws to suit ourselves or political agendas.

We’ve forgotten (if we ever actually learned) basic civics (and elected those who don’t know it either), and that each right we have comes with responsibilities, one of which is to acknowledge that our rights end where someone else’s begin. We’ve forgotten that all of our rights come with legal limits (i.e., we can’t own every type of armament imaginable; we can’t harass, threaten or libel someone; everyone on American soil is entitled to due process, etc.), and that even within those limits, we may face consequences for what we’ve said and/or done. I mean, sure, you’re free to say you support Nazis, but that doesn’t mean you won’t lose customers, your job, etc., especially if it was said on social media.

Heck, we’ve forgotten history, and so we keep repeating things we should have learned long ago weren’t to be done in a moral, lawful society (like Nazism, fascism, communism, etc., are bad), or that inevitably lead to a hard fall (Smoot-Hawley redux, anyone?).

Hyperpartisans (those typically with cult-like devotion to their cause, which tends toward the fringes) bear a lot of responsibility for where we are now, having erased for themselves and their followers the reality of nuance (there’s virtually no area of life where there are only two responses to a problem, so stop with the binary thinking). By glossing over and/or flat-out lying about the details, they’ve made it that much harder to argue constructively against whatever they’re espousing because it’s so much easier now for them to discount any argument as partisan sniping.

Sure, sometimes it is just that, but c’mon. The more you impute motives to another’s argument that aren’t there (because everyone on the other side believes such-and-such, regardless of the fact that more people are independent than members of the two major U.S. parties), the more we get dragged into an unending abyss of hyperpartisan muck.

Only the hyperpartisans enjoy that. And their enjoyment is … troubling, to say the least. I usually feel the need to bathe after dealing with them.

What say we pause for a moment and reconsider how we’re going about things? Maybe take a refresher course on civics, history, and law. Let’s re-learn those limits and actually try to adhere to them, and elect people who are dedicated to upholding those limits (i.e., the Constitution and rule of law). Let’s make sure laws are applied evenly to all, and that no citizens are marginalized (might take some getting used to if you’re a straight white Christian male, but we are all supposed to be equal, which many of us, especially women, people of color, the poor, LGBTQ+, etc., long have not been).

And let’s maybe try to remember what it means to be a decent human being; to be the sort of person one would trust keeping an eye over your house and pets while you’re gone; to think of others before ourselves; to remember that the social contract recommends, among other things, that you check with others in the immediate vicinity before blasting music, etc., because you’re not the only person in existence and your actions can affect others (believe it or not, not everyone wants to hear your twangy Gospel, krunk, polka, Broadway or other type of music, especially during what should be a quiet time, so turn it down and/or close your windows and doors, and for God’s sake, don’t sit out in your car, windows down, and blast your music).

And maybe, just maybe, I can try to remember that rushing things after surgery is not a good idea, no matter how impatient I am (and I’m very impatient; heck, I waited about five minutes, which is a looooong time for me, for someone at Lowe’s to help me load before I just went to my car myself even though I struggled with the bags of soil earlier).

Yeah, still working on that not-rushing thing. Not successfully, mind you, but working on it.