The impossible just takes a little longer..

A few years back, I started to learn the guitar and out of curiosity, checked out a few advanced tunes on the internet. I was shocked by their difficulty and thought, “They’re impossible to play!”. Today, I have mastered most of those tunes and many more. Now, if I claim that any song is impossible, my sister says, “That’s only for a week!”

Five hundred years back, imagine someone claiming that one day a man would use thin, small pieces of shiny material to procure a paper that allows one to sit on the back of a flying metal bird that takes us to any place we want! Would sound like wishful thinking, right?! Think again. This is our reality of today! Don’t we use our credit cards to buy air tickets and board a plane to any world destination of our choice?! Can we deny the fact that man has achieved the impossible? Over the centuries, Man’s invention and discoveries have grown more and more sophisticated and provided us with so many facilities that no task requires more work than the push of a button or the click of a mouse.

When you think about achieving the impossible, you can’t help but think of Eklavya, the greatest archer of all time. So perfect was his shot, that he could silence a barking dog by shooting its mouth shut, leaving it otherwise unharmed. It is possible, we argue. But let us not forget the fact that Eklavya did not have one minute of formal training. Living in a forest, worshipping a clay idol of Dronacharya, he spent years practising archery, and despite not having any teacher to direct him, he perfected this art. He didn’t lose hope and that’s why he accomplished such a seemingly impossible feat.

Man on the moon, planes faster than sound, students scoring 100% in their boards, flying cars, drugs that control our mood- weren’t all these things impossible at one point of time? We can only achieve our goals if we believe we can do it, no matter how improbable it seems. Nelson Mandela once said, “It always seems impossible, until it is done.”