I'M POSSIBLE

From some unknown place, Doris Day’s Que Sera, Sera, flew into my head this morning.
As I mulled over the words, I realized they are probably the most damaging and defeatist lines ever…

Granted that the future may not be ours to see but whatever will be must not be. Whatever becomes is a product of the choices we make, the decisions we take and how we respond to happenstances outside of our spheres of influence. Meaning there are things we do control: if we work those well, they will impinge upon those over which we have direct control.

The world is replete with stories of people who defied doctors’ reports, damned expert opinions and discountenanced plausible expectations to do and become just what they had been told they could not. They not only achieved what had been tagged impossible, they did them in such grand style the world stood stopped to applaud them.

Consider Henry Ford. His dream was labelled untenable: who had ever heard of a V8 engine on one block? Good a thing Mr Ford was no expert; he just might have accepted those opinions and the V8 (technically it was an L-head engine) would have joined the thankless ranks of the countless inventions that never lived. And what would have become of the automobile industry, and the world?

Jessica Cox is a motivational speaker who has spoken in six continents and over twenty countries; she has a black belt in Taekwondo and a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. She…wait for it…was born armless! She is the first armless person in aviation history to earn a pilot’s certificate.

What matters, and changes the game EVERYTIME, is what you do with what is available. It is not what you lack or were denied. If the Henry Fords, Jessica Coxes, Cobhams Asuquos and Oscar Pistoriuses of this world were to wait on fate, destiny or whatever you call it they would, at the most, be charity cases and depend on handouts. They chose to travel a different route, and today they motivate even you who have no physical challenge.

The point being that where and how you start the race is immaterial. Keep running. Modify existing rules, if they limit you. Invent new ones, if you have to. But by all means, forget the limitations (which are what the notion of predetermination imposes) and reach for the sky. That is where all winged creatures hold their exhibition.

This statement of unknown origin is quite apt: "The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible."

Defy odds.
Deal powerfully.
See you at the top!

John Chidi, 2016

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