Anything is possible

It’s a bold statement – silly, even. You may think I am a pie-in-the-sky idealist.

I am.

That doesn’t make me any less right.

Anything is possible because we don’t understand how things are possible. We don’t know for sure why or how we exist. We don’t even know why gravity works, for crying out loud.

We live and die in the midst of the magical.

Sure – life seems to have a consistent trajectory, there are patterns. People go to school, get married, have children. Things are made of atoms; atoms have mass; we can predict the trajectory of a falling object. People go to work Monday through Friday. These patterns make us believe that because this is the stuff that happens, it’s also the stuff that will keep happening.

Change is hard, and people hate doing stuff that’s hard. It’s easier to pretend it’s impossible.

We ‘see’ a lot of patterns in our world. Our brains evolved to spot patterns, even when they aren’t there. We start thinking these patterns are rules. We build constraints inside of our own minds.

People in meetings say, “You can’t do that.” Nobody asks, “Why?”

You abide by these rules, calling yourself a realist. You miss opportunities and rarely reach big goals. Patterns keep repeating and your apathetic realism becomes validated once again. Despite how logical this may feel, it is, in fact, completely irrational.

While our pattern-seeking brains may think they know the future – they don’t. There are events in our lifetimes that will be unpredictable. Some will change how we view the world. This is not because the events themselves will change the world. It’s because unpredictable events force us to revisit our assumptions. We suddenly wake up from our rigid beliefs. We are challenged. It’s uncomfortable. Our list of pre-determined set of possible events is blown up. Even after experiencing such an event, people try as hard as they can to revert back to their old way of thinking.

They live their lives believing that that big dream they once had is just not possible. Just a silly dream from a silly child, they tell themselves, disparaging the purity of their younger heart.

I’m not saying everything will be better and all your dreams will come true if you believe anything is possible. What will change is that you will make better decisions based on rational thinking. This kind of rationality won’t jive well with everyone in your circle. In some situations, you’ll smile and keep it to yourself. Not everyone needs to know you’re trying to break the pattern.

Don’t get me wrong … you may not be happy, even if you believe it. You might struggle a bit with the overwhelming knowledge that you really just don’t know much of anything at all.

But at least you will be right.

Because anything is possible.