Reflections on Possibility

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This is a clever play on words, and I see it now and then on my Timelines.  Anything is possible sometimes slips into conversation.

I've reflected on this awhile, and come up with these 'thought' examples:  Say, I were to quit everything I was doing, and devote myself completely to basketball.  More specifically, I'd focus on dunking the ball like Michael Jordan.  No matter how much coaching I get from the best in the game, and no matter how much I train and practice, I will never be able to dunk like Michael Jordan.  I am 5-feet, 5-inches tall, a bit heavier set than I'd like to admit, healthy and fit but nowhere near the athleticism of His Airness.  Even the vast majority of professionals cannot dunk like Michael Jordan, and they have way more basketball prowess and potential than I do.

Also, I am smart and knowledgeable in my own right.  But even with the smartest minds tutoring me, say, 24/7, I will never be an Albert Einstein.  He is a rare genius that scores of the most intelligent simply cannot hold a candle to.  Certainly I can learn by acquiring more knowledge and developing greater thinking skills, so I suppose that would be a benefit to getting smart tutoring.  Similarly, put me in a rigorous basketball camp, and my knowledge and skills will definitely increase.  Regardless, I will never be an Albert Einstein or Michael Jordan.

The fact is, not everything is possible.  There are probably many more things in life, and in the world around us, that are impossible.  Left to our own human device, we cannot fly the heavens like birds, or swim like fish without surfacing for air.  In a related, these animals cannot do the sort of critical, reflective thinking that we can do or communicate in such varied, sophisticated languages.

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Yet, as a motivational tool, it's awesome to believe that impossible is nothing.  If these words get you jazzed up, and you're able to do better with whatever you're trying to accomplish, then of course more power to you.  Have at it.  The truth of the matter notwithstanding, The Human Algorithm acknowledges that logic, objectivity and rationality are simply part-and-parcel of who we are, and who we are also comprises of intuition, subjectivity and imagination.  To believe that anything is possible is a healthy illusion, even an adaptive myth, if you realize it's not true and you make it serve your purpose.

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When I worked for ENOC Group in Dubai, I conceived and crafted a process of assessing leadership potential.  This is a difficult effort, and it simply isn't a perfect science, but all things considered I succeeded at gauging others' headroom for rising up the corporate ladder.  That's how I defined it, essentially:  Our capacity to learn and develop, and assume greater, more complex leadership responsibilities in the future.  Say, you take an ordinary car, and drive it as fast as possible.  It has an upper limit, beyond which it cannot run any faster.  It's easy enough, in other words, to determine its potential or capacity.  However, it simply isn't so easy to do the same with people.  What is our upper limit, as far as our leadership growth, advancement and impact are concerned?

Outside of our imperfect tools for measuring our potential, perhaps the best way to determine our upper limit is simply to do it.  If something is important enough to us, we will give it a try, and try again, even if at first we don't succeed.  But actually getting it done, despite others' claim that it's impossible for us to do it, is not only proof of our greater capacity but also satisfaction to an utmost.  Through learning and development, experience and reflection, effort and endeavor, belief and tenacity, we can do much more over time than we can right now.

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In my Michael Jordan and Albert Einstein examples, I know what is in fact impossible for me to do.  I may lay the same claim, in relation to any other person I run into on the street, but then I simply wouldn't be so sure of what I'm saying.  Who knows what he or she can actually do?  Perhaps he or she knows much better than I or anyone else.

So my point, at the end of the day, is it makes sense to believe that nothing is impossible as a way to motivate ourselves and to navigate uncertainty.