The Impossible Things

I think of this more as an essay rather than a story, but it was truly enjoyable to write, nonetheless.

Between school, homework, school, more homework, and eventually some intense swim practice, I have little time to do the things I like to do most. But when I do get the chance, I really like to make the best of it. The other day, I watched the most recent remake of Alice in Wonderland. While doing so, I discovered one of my new favorite quotes. "I sometimes believe in as many as six impossible things before breakfast." ~Alice

For those of you that don't know, I find quotes to be one of the most amazing thing in the world. They're inspiring, always sparking a thought in my mind that will sometimes lead to just one of many debates I have with myself. I do believe one shouldn't drown themselves in other peoples' words, and instead should keep their words balanced with the words they hear every day, but call me a hypocrite, because one day I will be found dead at the bottom of a pool of words, and when medical examiners slice open my body for the autopsy, the speakings of Shakespeare and Ralph Waldo Emerson will spill out of my veins for hours.

Anywho, I couldn't really tell you why this quote caught my eye-or, my ear, rather. It simply made me smile, and I thought to myself, "You know? I really like that." My mind also thought something else. Not me, my mind. I was not aware of this thought until I realized what was going on inside of my head-a very  thorough debate. "I will dwell on this one sentence for a few days, then I will look up more quotes online, searching for ones that match the feeling this one gave, but I will end my viral search unsatisfied. So, I will go back to this quote, realize that I have been mystified by, yet infatuated with, a fictional movie's words - then feel the need to share these words and my feelings toward them." That is what my mind thought. And here I am. Six Impossible Things. What does that even mean? And, by the way, WHO determines what's impossible or not? The scientists? I don't think so. I think every individual has a chalk line drawn somewhere inside their neocortex, and when something too amazing--

Wait, let me stop right there. Let me explain how I am using this word in this context. The root word of amazing is obviously 'amaze.' And personally, I believe that both beautiful and horrid things can amaze you, and you can find beautiful and horrid things amazing--amazingly beautiful or amazing horrid. You get the point. Anyways, that is what I mean when I say amazing. I do apologize if I have bored you so much into having a near death experience, but I felt the urge to clarify that.

Anywho...

--to be 'true' or 'possible' is presented to us, we deem is IMpossible, because this world is simply too dull or too sad or too bleak to have contain anything that colorful and awe inspiring. But tell me, what if I secretly reached into your mind while you were sorting the logical from the illogical and erased just a bit of that line? Things might get a bit jumbled, but we might still be able to function well enough to not try anything 'stupid.'

Now, what if I erased the whole line? Now you're in trouble, because you can't tell what's scientifically or logically 'right' from 'wrong.' But would it really be that bad to live for an hour or two before breakfast to believe in some of those beautiful, awe inspiring things? Though I must say, a bit of the line may be needed to keep us from thinking we can fly when we jump of a 47 story building with patches of spandex connecting our arms to our hips, but maybe just thinking about the concept of flying would give us an over joyous feeling that might leave a smile on our face for the rest of the day. How many people in the world do you know that go around smiling all day because they thought about how nice it would be to soar in the clouds for just a few minutes? In all honesty, I know of none. We're all too busy dealing with the daily stresses that life hands to us.

The Impossible Things are also The Mysterious Things. They're cloaked in a veil so we can't quite see them as clearly as we could if we had seen them in reality, or if we had experienced them first-hand. Sometimes we can deal with the veil, other times we'll tug on it a bit, only to find that it won't pull free, and we deal with the 'fact' that we'll never know what it's like to, referring back to the original example, fly. But then there are the times when we desire the clarity of a concept not covered by a veil that in consumes us and we become obsessed. Some of us figure out how to remove the veil, and we experience that very over joyous feeling, but to the nth degree. We're euphoric, and we are convinced our lives our complete. Others aren't so convinced, and even after this achievement, we search for another veil to lift. And then there are those that work and work at lifting the veil, and never succeed.

The point is, when we encounter the veil, we do-or don't do-many things with it. There are an infinite number of things; some good, some not-so-good. But what brought us to the veil in the first place? A belief in The Impossible Things. For those precious moments before our morning meal, The Impossible become The Possible, and they give us the inspiration some of us have been searching for our whole lives, or have even never known about. The inspiration causes another feeling. It gives us this sense of mystery. One can't help but think to themselves, "I've got this concept, this inspiration. I am holding it in my hands and I can do anything I want with it, anything in the world. So what am I going to do? What should I do?"

As much as I wish I could, I am not the one to tell you what you should do with your inspiration. Everyone has their own way of telling between right and wrong (morally, that is, not factually), so I am sure you can figure out what you should and shouldn't do with this beautifully raw concept. What you actually are going to do with it, though... Well, I am not psychic, and I can't tell you where you will be months or years from now. And I certainly don't know what you aspire to be, do, or see as you live from day to day. But I can tell you this: I know (okay, well, I believe) that everyone dreams. Do I mean dreams as in the things we can hardly remember in the morning, or goals or things we'd like to accomplish? I don't know, and if I did know, I wouldn't tell you, because that's for you to decide. Some of us-scratch that, most of us have at least one dream in our lifetime that is the most unbelievable and impossible thing in the world. But at one point in our lives, we 100 percent believed that one day, these dreams will or may come true. Some of us were just young tots when we believed this, and some of us are grown adults, but the age of when we believed these things doesn't matter. A belief is a belief.

Chances are, we abandoned these dreams behind, because we remembered the line in our neocortex, and we placed these Impossible Things neatly on the 'Illogical' side and forgot about them.

I dare you, right now, to delve into the illogical side and find one of those Impossible Things. Remember how vividly you once believed-or even didn't believe- in it. It might have been one of those things that just crossed your mind, laughing at how on Earth you would think of something as crazy as that, whatever that is. Dig it up and place it directly on the middle of the line, and leave it there until the next opportunity you get, maybe before breakfast, to believe in it for a short while. Forget about the Illogical side of the line, and force it to transform into one of The Possible Things, one of those things that one day you will see without a veil. Then, I want you to decide whether or not this beautiful concept is truly Impossible. After all, it is YOUR decision to decide whether something is Impossible or not.

You might not come to a decision right away. You might not even come to a decision for a very, very long time. And that's okay. Not all decisions are made right away. But I do so ask you this: The next time you go to put something on the Illogical side of that chalk line, reconsider it just once. Put the concept on hold and let it burn a little inside your mind. Perhaps what you once thought was an Impossible Thing, is actually something that is within your reach at this very moment. Perhaps there is only one thing holding the veil down that covers the undecidedly Possible thing: the lack of belief.