Learning to fly

How long will it take me to learn to fly? This is a question I remember considering when I was about 9 or 10 years old, and I don’t mean flying an aircraft. I mean crazy magical levitation using the power of my mind.

Yes, I was an interesting child... but the question is one that I very seriously thought about and the fact that I asked it is really important.

I remember talking to friends of mine about a tv show I had watched featuring a magician who claimed to be able to levitate, something that I thought was a brilliant idea and I wanted to be able to do it too. But when my friends said that it wasn’t possible, my response wasn’t to give up and decide they were right. My response was to set about doing it because I believed I could do anything.

The question I asked myself wasn’t “Can I do this?” but instead “How long will it take me to do this”.

I had no idea how the magician did it, I had no idea where to even start if I wanted to be able to do the same thing, but I automatically assumed that I was capable of doing anything, it was just a matter of time and effort.

That same mentality has created some pretty amazing opportunities in my life so far because I seldom stop to ask if something is possible, for the most part, I assume it is and I recognize that often my ONLY obstacle is not yet knowing how. And with determination and resilience,

I believe that we can learn how to do pretty much anything we put our minds to.

Yesterday I was thinking about the way in which we make our opportunities smaller by believing that there are some things we cant do, or will never be able to do, and I was wondering about that absolute belief that we have as children about what is possible. I wondered when we lose that amazing belief because I don’t think it's about being naive or not knowing what’s possible or not, I think it's about being open to possibility, even crazy possibility.

But being open to believing that anything is possible means that you’re often finding ways to MAKE things possible.

Oh, and I never did learn to fly, I got distracted by a new mission not long after. I decided that I was going to catch fairies instead.