I was recently in my car driving down a six lane road (three lanes in each direction), when I had to slow to stop
There were several geese crossing the road. At least a dozen of them. It was kind of cute, and as I  watched them  waddling across the road ever so slowly and thought that I’d really like to get to my destination, I rolled down my window and called out to the geese, “You know, you guys can fly.”
It didn’t help. They didn’t flap their wings and soar across the road at an elevation that didn’t stop traffic. However, the situation did cause me to think. These geese, even though they didn’t know it, have a lot in common with people. Sometimes, we’ve got a talent inside of us that we just fail to use, even though it would be immensely helpful.
So, today, I thought I’d encourage everyone to remember they can fly. Well, not literally of course (because you can’t; not without an airplane or a glider or some other man-made device assisting you). But figuratively. Don’t get in a rut of doing things one way and forget about the multitude of other ways you have to tackle your problems. You’ve got mad skillz (as they used to say), so trot all of them out when you need to. You’ve got that awesome, big, wrinkly brain of yours. Use it to figure out if you need to break out your figurative wings, or if walking across the road is actually the best option.
Fly high today!
I had an experience that brought this to mind recently. Our tiny, old, brick house badly needed scraping, pointing and painting. It had been patched so many time by previous owners that restoring the brick was out of the question. It had also been painted – long ago. I complained to a handyman neighbour that we could not afford to have it done. His response, “You can do it.”
“Yeah, right,” I said. “I don’t know how and I’m too old.
Well, he showed me how to do the pointing. I scraped. I pointed. My body held up. And the second coat of paint goes on tomorrow – all by me. It looks fabulous.
If that man had not challenged me I’d still be moaning.
Oh, that’s wonderful, Yvonne. Work around the house is something people often underestimate themselves on. I think there’s this concern that we can make it worse and end up having it cost twice as much to fix than if we’d just left it alone. But, a lot of times some of the things that look complicated are really doable, with just a little training.
So, glad you were able to do your pointing yourself, after a quick lesson. That’s awesome.
Thank you. And it feels so good to challenge our limits and achieve something we thought was beyond our capacities. I hope this inspires someone out there to stretch their wings.