I Am Thankful for Unlimited Possibilities… and a World of Probabilities…

Some days are just overwhelming.  Today has been one of them.  Well, it all started night before last.  That’s one of the funny things about life.  You see or hear something that really catches your attention — you know, something that captures your imagination — then it seems that everywhere you look there is something that plays off the first idea.

I can remember when I bought my first car.  I was twenty-one and the car was a beauty.  It was a 1969 Chevrolet Rally Sport — white with a black vinyl top, and the seats…. Oh, my those seats!  Black leather trim around a black and white hounds tooth fabric.  And of course, it had those racing stripes that I thought set it apart from all the other cars on the road.  Then, I got my new car on the road and I bet I saw a hundred just like it during the first month. 

That’s how life is, I think.  We get a new car — one we haven’t seen on the road as much as some others — and suddenly every human being on earth seems to be driving the same kind of car.  Now, of course, I know that it is only because we are noticing that particular brand or color or whatever.

But, that brings me around to something I saw on television the other night.  I’m a big Charlie Rose fan — well, most of the time.  Anyway, he had a doctor on his program who was talking about how the brain works — or at least what we know about how the brain works so far.  This doctor was sharing experiences that several years ago would have passed for miracles — unexplained miracles.  And, today we are learning a little more about how these “miracles” can be recreated.  That was enough to overwhelm me.

This morning when I woke up there was a story on the television about a young man who had a severe injury that had left him paralyzed — a broken neck.  Anyway, three years after the accident this young man was walking.  Maybe it is a miracle — or maybe the miracle is that someone has begun to figure out how parts of the brain work.  Anyway, all this phenomenon is the result of the Christopher Reeve Foundation and the contributions made by Christopher and Dana Reeve during their lifetimes.

All this exposure to “new” science got me to thinking.  The brain is a miracle all by itself.  But, to think that someone who has been paralyzed can train the brain to detour the injury, so to speak, and tell his legs to work again is just overwhelming to me.  (Please let me note that I have drastically over-simplified the work of the doctors and this patient.)

But, here’s the point.  This afternoon I heard a neighborhood kid say, “I can’t do this…”  He was talking about a task that was new to him.

His mother replied, “If it’s too difficult, don’t do it.”

If the little task had been a question of safety for the child I would agree with the mother.  But, the task at hand would at best stretch the child’s range of capabilities.  It would not be easy to accomplish.  But, none of us — well, few of us — get it exactly right the first time we try, regardless of what we try to do.  But, is that a reason not to try?

I have wondered since this afternoon what the world would be like if we always obeyed all of life’s stop signs, if we accepted our self-imposed limitations.  Would we have computers?  Would we be able to talk to people all around the world by dialing a few numbers on a cell phone?  Would we still be riding in horse drawn carriages?  What if no one had ever stretched the boundaries?  Would we still be living in caves? 

Or, as I think about a stop sign that I saw once upon a time while wandering around the island of Oahu, would I have missed a new experience?  The sign said, “STOP!  No rental cars beyond this point.”  I remember getting out of the rental car and walking for quite some distance until… until I came upon a nudist colony!  I suppose it was for locals only, since all tourists drive rental cars. 

I can’t say that every experience is worth going the extra mile for.  But, how will we know if we do not explore the possibilities?  So, today I am thankful for unlimited possibilities… and all the probabilities that will follow.

Tagged as: Gratitude, Gratitude Journal, Possibilities, Probabilities