Friday, August 14, 2009

Making the Seemingly Impossible, Possible

Have you worked out yet that life actually starts when things get hard? Pressure brings us opportunities to succeed or fail. Everything else is but the blowing of wind in the overall scheme of things. Merely practice and dress rehearsal. It’s impossible to tell a person’s true character unless/until they’re under pressure. Pressure brings opportunities. It’s ‘game time’ so to speak.

How many times have you been daunted at something only to find that when you got stuck into it, it wasn’t so hard after all? Approaching the hard things as if they’re easy, just by simply starting them, makes a liar out of our oft-erroneous pre-conceptions. We hence surprise and inspire ourselves.

And when the pressure comes on, and the performance begins, all the practise time is over and we’re onto the real thing, finally, butterflies and all. I recall a cricket captain of mine imploring us to expect, and even seek that the ball would be hit to us so we could field it. Thinking like this embraces with courage notions of success and failure within expectation, and the tension between both. We should be seeking in life, not avoiding.

Failure is not the end of the road, after all. It’s only practice that doesn’t work out as intended. It’s the fundamental learning ground. When failure can’t kill us, nothing really can. We become so much more functional and capable as the only thing that might disarm us truly becomes what it is, nothing.

At the time we’re most tempted to give up we shouldn’t. We should prepare for victory, finally! Like the enemy which sees its prey falling and commences the victory celebrations early; the tables are turned in a twist--a modicum of confidence flips the ensuing events. At the eleventh hour victory is secured against all odds.

When we learn this lesson, finally, nothing fears us except that which is always against us. The universal laws of life cannot be transgressed. We cannot hope to come against them, and who’d want to? We at last can stand in faith knowing that nothing can harm us in the spiritual sense.

It’s indeed a wonderful thing to know and continually implement: many of the things in this life that we might think are, or once thought were, impossible, are actually very much achievable.

We must, however, learn to test boundaries and challenge our fears to engage this truth. We’ll never know ‘til we give it a go.

At some point we must also distrust what our eyes see and our instincts feel, going on in confidence anyway. And in that mix, wisdom must be exercised.

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