Rabbi David Wolpe has a nice reflection on life and limits, perhaps particularly relevant as we grow older:
When God enters into a covenant with Abraham, the name God uses is El Shaddai (Gen. 17:1). Since the dai means “enough” (as in dayenu on Passover), some interpreters have seen this name as denoting a setting of boundaries.
The Torah Temimah comments on the rabbinic traditions which explain that God set limits to the creation of the world. God did not make the world perfect. Rather at a certain point, God said, “Enough! In order to allow human beings to be partners, I will now stop creating and give people the power to improve the world.” This interpretation understands El Shaddai as marking the limits set by God.
Rabbi S.R. Hirsch asks us to consider the other side. All of Judaism, he says, is about the right way to draw boundaries and practice restraint — a dai training. We have appetites but must elevate them; dreams but must direct them; powerful emotions but must retrain and channel them. From the beginning of the covenant, God was teaching us to know that life is not only energy, life is limitation, and the painting cannot exist without the frame. El Shaddai is the God who teaches us to live with limits.
Rabbi Mordecai Finley has a nice interpretation of the story of one of the persons whose limitations may have simply been part of who he was, and who made the most of them:
One of my favorite narratives is that of Esau, older brother of Jacob and putative inheritor of his father, Isaac. But his mother, Rebecca, has received word from God that Jacob is to inherit, not Esau. Unbeknownst to Esau, forces are in motion to deprive him of that which was his.
Or was it his?
The narrative seems to be telling us that some things to which we have a right or a claim are not truly ours. Esau seems to know this when he comes in from the field, utterly exhausted. He sells the birthright for a bowl of stew. One tradition says he was exhausted trying to be something he wasn’t — the kind of person who would inherit his father’s world. He didn’t despise the birthright per se, but rather he hated his own fraudulence, trying to be something he was not. . .
Esau, in a moment of truth, gave it to his brother.
Life is sometimes clear, sometimes an infinite mystery, always a continuing story. It is about limitations and transcendence as well: people simultaneously not much above animals and little lower than the angels. And sometimes there are actual angels around as well. I know some.