By Shae Hadden
Bio
“The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible and achieve it, generation after generation.”
—Pearl S. Buck
When I was younger, I used to believe in setting goals that were feasible, practical, reasonable and possible. Now, in middle age, I find myself wanting to throw aside the limited scope of the goals I inherited from my parents, peers, and society. Rather than save up or mete out my resources to last into a distant future, I’d prefer to use them and myself up as I attempt to create what doesn’t exist yet, define what isn’t clear and do what has not been done before. I’d rather defy reasonableness and create new possibilities than continue to live as I have…
People throughout history have done just that. Humanity’s greatest creations began with someone believing that what seems unreasonable is a possibility. Every individual’s achievements start with that same belief.
When my elderly aunt says it’s ridiculous to think she can walk to the end of the street two months after a leg operation, she cannot. Doctors and physiotherapists telling her that it is possible now are not enough: she must believe it herself before she’ll move into action and start ‘taking the steps’ out her front door. She must see ‘being mobile’ as a possibility for herself before she will be mobile.
Several of my friends despair about their middle-age spread and general fitness level. They long for a trim, strong, healthy body, but they don’t really believe it’s a possibility for them. Their reasons and excuses are all too familiar to me. They believe it will be unbearably difficult or that it will not be possible to endure the ‘regimen’ they imagine is required to achieve the fitness level they desire. They don’t see the possibility of a healthy physique for themselves. It doesn’t matter what I say I see as being possible for them. It doesn’t matter what I suggest as possible ways of moving into action. They will start a diet and exercise program once again, only to revert back to their old patterns in a short period of time.
Is prudence their challenge? Or a lack of commitment?
I think perhaps it’s even more subtle than that…it’s as if we must believe in ourselves as a possibility before we can create a new possibility for ourselves.
Perhaps we must believe “I’m possible” before we undertake the ‘impossible’.
So, dear friends, I will continue to relate to you as the possibility you are…until you can see that for yourselves.
“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy…. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”
—George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman