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The Consolations of Imperfection: Learning to Appreciate Life's Limitations

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M. Scott Peck's 1978 book THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED is still known for its opening paragraph, a one-sentence reality check addressed to the upwardly mobile, ready to conquer the world: "Life is difficult."

Donald McCullough similarly starts his new book with a stark, one-line paragraph: "There are limitations in life." But unlike Peck's bestseller, this is not a book for the hale and hearty young adult who anticipates scaling mountains like "the little engine that could." Rather, it is for the person who resonates with the problem faced by Mike Mulligan and his aging steam shovel: even the brightest and best of us cannot and will not always be shiny and bright. The book is aptly subtitled "Learning to Appreciate Life's Limitations."

McCullough writes as a fifty-three-year-old recovering achiever --- a successful pastor and preacher turned seminary president whose career exploded several years ago when an unidentified-in-these-pages past failure came to light. From this loss --- of job, reputation, friends and self-definition --- he has written an insightful and helpful book with twenty well-titled chapters, each dealing with the limits of a particular aspect of the good life: achievement, romance, public approval, relationships, spirituality, moral goodness, fitness (the body), the senses, time ...

It's a shame that a chapter on the limits of knowledge, "Giving Up on the New York Times Crossword Puzzle," is placed early in the book, as it is uncharacteristically heavy and could discourage readers from continuing to garner the insight of chapters such as "On Not Being Elected President (or Member of the Condo Board): The Limits of Achievement" and "Mind If I Lean on Your Arm?: The Limits of Confidence," in which McCullough admits, albeit in third person, "The man who, a few months before, thought nothing of speaking to thousands of people, was suddenly nervous about ... asking for help at the bank."

McCullough's anecdotes are engaging and his analysis insightful. He does not wallow in the muck, but leads each topic to a redemptive conclusion.

His chapters follow a consistent progression: defining and discussing the value of the identified virtue (the thrill of victory), anecdotally presenting the agony of defeat, laying out consolations --- lessons learned from the loss and benefits of a new, lower-flying life. Many of these consolations can be enjoyed here and now. I note, however, that the chapter about money, "A Sudden Interest in the Future of Social Security," comes short of discussing the consolations of material poverty but rather turns to a lengthy discussion of Jesus' parable of the fool who built bigger and bigger barns, to his spiritual peril.

In contrast, a few chapters include no scriptural reflection. Such is the case with a chapter on the limitations of responsibility, "The World Didn't Even Notice When I Quit Trying to Save It," which lays out a life-cycle paradox: "To grow in maturity we must accept responsibility." But eventually "to maintain the trajectory of growth, we have to let go of responsibility as completely as we had to accept it in the first place," meaning "we must acquiesce to the limitations of what we can do." We cannot save the world or even, ultimately, our children, as we are not God.

It's sobering that a man not yet fifty-five has so well identified and from personal experience discussed losses or restrictions that are mostly age-related, as if the golden decade is more related to autumnal aspen leaves than to bright sun on a clear day.

On the other hand, it's refreshing to find a book written with a strong and personal male voice --- it might even be considered a man's book --- that is utterly relevant to professional women and probably all women. For baby boomers of both genders, there's great material here for discussion. McCullough might well have included questions to provoke and focus such group discussion or personal reflection.

--- Reviewed by Evelyn Bence

In this absorbing and instructive book, Donald McCullough takes on some of life's greatest limitations, leading the reader from frustration and disappointment to hope and even redemption.

McCullough begins by observing that limits are inherent in life. But we ignore or deny them because they point to the final limitation of death, which is our greatest fear. McCullough cites Ernest Becker's influential book, The Denial of Death, for the proposition that repressing our fear of death causes us all kinds of anxieties and other problems. Thus, painful as it may be, confronting limitations is in our best interests. Moreover, McCullough proposes that limitations paradoxically may serve a good purpose.

McCullough goes on to describe numerous limitations we face (physical, mental, relational, moral, spiritual, etc.). Although he presents each limitation in a separate chapter, some of the chapters have substantial overlap: the Body and the Senses; Romance and Sex; Confidence and Optimism. He describes some limitations in more depth than others, but it is difficult to think of many significant limitations that he ignores.

Most of the limitations result from the loss of something we value (good health, reputation, confidence). But a few flow from the discovery that even having what we want does not produce long-term fulfillment--money cannot buy happiness, and there never are enough pleasures to satisfy us.

McCullough suggests that accepting and coming to terms with limits can offer valuable gifts, such as:

(1) Greater wholeness and personal growth.
(2) A decline of self-orientation, and an increasing capacity to genuinely love others.
(3) Recognition and development of our spiritual aspects.
(4) Freedom from the impossible burden of trying to be God.
(5) Openness to the presence and power of God and our need to rely on God.
(6) The ability to deal with death.

McCullough writes from a Christian perspective, with periodic Biblical references and expositions. But he takes pains to not be preachy, and much of the book can be appreciated by readers of different faiths, or even an atheist.

McCullough draws heavily on Ernest Becker's analysis of the dysfunctional ways that our unconscious minds lead us to cope with our terror of death. However, he departs from Becker in the end. Becker advises us to face the bleak facts of our existence and our death, but he offers no further solution. In contrast, McCullough declares the power to overcome death by surrendering to God and trusting in His grace to save us. Just as death is the ultimate limitation, for McCullough the Christian promise of life beyond death is the ultimate consolation.

McCullough is most compelling when discussing stark limitations he has had to confront, in particular, those resulting when he was forced to resign his position as a Presbyterian seminary president because of some personal moral failings. He describes how those difficult experiences had a significant cathartic effect in his life.

Each reader will have his or her own stories about limitations faced. One useful purpose the book can serve is to spur readers to reflect on those stories.

The Consolations of Imperfection probably will resonate most with the middle-aged, those who from personal experience are beginning to run into various limits, but may be having trouble making sense of them. The young typically do not want to deal with these issues; the old are more apt to have already reconciled themselves to them. It also can be a useful resource in times of doubt or despair over life's difficulties.

A book that deals with limitations (and ultimately death) as directly as McCullough's does has the potential of being disquieting, if not depressing. But McCullough counteracts the seriousness of the subject matter with an informal, conversational approach. He makes frequent and effective use of humor, much of it self-deprecating. He also is a skillful storyteller and is adept at coming up with striking and apt analogies and metaphors. As a result, the book is relatively easy, even pleasurable, to read. Although this generally is a plus, the writing at times seems a tad breezy for the topic.

McCullough's clarity in laying out the various limitations and their associated consolations also is a strength for the most part. But although I find myself agreeing intellectually with him most of the time, I must confess that I am not always as enthusiastic as he seems to be in embracing the consolations. To be fair, McCullough repeatedly acknowledges the pain resulting from many limitations. He also cautions that some limitations are cloaked in mysteries that we never will be able to fully understand. Even so, his explanations sometimes seem a bit too straightforward to me. In any case, I would affirm his ultimate conclusions.

(Note to book editor: the Table of Contents has a couple of errors, incorrectly showing the subtitle to Chapter 14 as "The Limitations of Control" rather than "The Limitations of Responsibility" and the subtitle to Chapter 15 as "The Limitations of Freedom" rather then "The Limitations of Control.")

David C. Burgess

Perfection, Anne Lamott once observed, is the voice of the oppressor. But the lure of life without limits is part of our American mythos; its power is nearly irresistible. You can be and do anything, we are told. As inspirational as this truism sounds, and I have used it with my own children, to be perfect, to live as if there are no limits, is a burden you would not wish on your worst enemy. "Unable to accept ourselves as we are," writes Joan Chissister, "we wear ourselves out in an effort to become unimpeachable."

Unless you heed the wisdom of Donald McCullough, a former Presbyterian pastor and seminary president. In an earlier book called The Wisdom of Pelicans; A Search for Healing at the Water's Edge (2002), McCullough recounts how his marriage failed from circumstances and poor choices, and then how he was later fired as president of a seminary even though he had tried hard to make amends. In his most recent book, he casts a far broader net. All of us, in many ways, and despite the lie that culture feeds us, will "collide with the inevitable" limits of life. The key, writes McCullough, is to embrace these limitations as consolations.

Limits in life run broad and deep, and McCullough explores most all of them. Each chapter treats a specific limit, and then shows how and why it might be construed as a blessing: the limitations of the body, relationships, knowledge, achievement, moral goodness, spirituality, romance, sex, confidence, public approval, money, competitiveness, control, freedom, pleasure, the senses, time and optimism. McCullough is a Christian, and so in his final chapter he explores the "limitations of limitations." Most of us fear our limitations and try hard to repress those fears. In an effort of what we think is self-survival, we deny the ultimate limitation of death, but the Christian Good News is that in an act of supreme self-sacrifice God "conquered death and brought life and immortality to light" (2 Timothy 1:10). So McCullough's final sentence, "This triumph of life means that we, too, can find our voices and our songs for singing" (p. 196).

According to Parker Palmer, "We resist the very ideas of limits, regarding limits of all sorts as temporary and regrettable impositions on our lives. Out national myth is about the endless defiance of limits: opening the western frontier, breaking the speed of sound, dropping people on the moon, discovering 'cyberspace' at the very moment when we have filled old-fashioned space with so much junk that we can barely move. We refuse to take no for an answer." (Let Your Life Speak).

McCullough takes as his premise Ernest Becker's assertion that our greatest fear as humans is the fear of death. Death is the ultimate limitation - the one of which all others are merely shadows. As humans, we long for immortality. Whether it's through modern medicine, our work, our children, or some other invention, we long to find some way to cheat death. Yet, death is inevitable . . . though not necessarily final, at least not in the Christian understanding of death. If death is McCullough's premise, then resurrection is his final answer. Writing from the standpoint of a former pastor and seminary professor, McCullough is adept at navigating psychological insights with biblical principles.

This book challenges us to reframe our limitations, looking for the gifts that they offer - the consolations that can be found for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. Chapters include reflections on the consolations of the limitations of the body, relationships, knowledge, achievement, morality, spirituality, romance, sex, confidence, public approval, money, competition, control, freedom, pleasure, the senses, time, optimism, and limitations themselves.

This book is a challenge to see resurrection in the midst of death, to find true living on the margins of life. It takes the reader on a journey back to the wholeness we were created to enjoy and a reconnection with the Creator of all the universe. It is a spiritual book in the best sense of the term. I've enjoyed reading and rereading many sections because they have been so impacting on me. I even bought 10 additional copies to give to friends (it helped that I found an unbeatable deal on them).