The word edge comes from Old English, and it carries two meanings folded into one: the cutting side of a blade, and a point — a tip, a limit, a place where something ends.

I find that distinction worth sitting with longer than we usually do. An edge is both a tool and a boundary. It’s the thing that can sever, and it’s also the place where something simply stops. We use the word constantly without touching either of its original meanings — I’m at the edge of something; this is an edge for me to push through — but we rarely ask what we’re actually invoking when we say it. A blade. A limit. Something that can cut, and something that contains.

This is the real question underneath capacity: how do you define how much you have, in any given moment, with any given person? And once you know — or even if you don’t fully know, even if you can’t articulate it — are you willing to act on that information?

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