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Undeterred by Impossible



I feel like I learn a lot from my kids. As a first-time parent for the fifth go-round, I am being educated like never before.

A couple nights ago, I was sitting down on the floor with my eleven-month-old son. We were enjoying some nice, relaxing down-time when the peaceful quiet was shattered by the orders being barked my oldest, Braelynn. “One hundred jumping jacks and ten burpees! NOW!!!” As my daughter was channeling her inner drill sergeant, all these kids started coming out of nowhere like some kinda midget flash mob. As the initial surprise faded, I realized all these kids were actually mine and I was quite impressed with their swift and orderly response. As they began to knock out their jumping jacks, I wondered why they don’t obey their parents with this much enthusiasm, but I digress.

As the four oldest worked through their calisthenics, I noticed my baby gazing intently at the events unfolding. His eyes grew wide with fascination as he watched his older siblings follow the direction of their fearless leader. I could see the excitement building up inside of him until the point he could no longer hold it inside and he burst into a frenzy of activity. Now, he can’t walk nor can he stand without bracing himself with his arms – this makes jumping jacks very difficult. But undaunted by the fairly significant constraint of not being able to stand up, he began to fervently wave his arms up and down, quite impressively executing at least the upper half of a jumping jack, but also looking like he was hailing a cab in NYC like his life depended on it. Even though he was sitting on the floor, his bottom half was still engaged as much as it could be. His legs kicked and flailed as his little butt bounced up and down on the floor. You could hardly label his activity as jumping jacks, but that didn’t stop the little man from fully investing all his effort and energy into giving it his best shot at doing whatever he could to join in with the rest of the troops.

Too often as adults, we curtail our own effort or energy because we see the task ahead of us as too burdensome and daunting and succumb to defeat before we even begin. Maybe we feel this gives us an “out” or an excuse when things end up not working out anyway. Maybe it’s because we don’t want to fully invest ourselves in hopes we can limit our inevitable disappointment. I don’t pretend to know all the reasons, but I do know, what my son was trying to accomplish was absolutely physically impossible for him, yet he threw his entire being into the attempt regardless of the inescapable outcome. And I can tell you he thoroughly enjoyed every second of it, despite the fact one could argue he “failed” to accomplish the exercise. He was committed to the process, regardless of the outcome. I hope to learn to muster the same enthusiasm in attempting that which others say is impossible.

"Start where you are, with what you have and make something of it." George Washington Carver


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