Anything's Possible?

Why do people say that? Maybe, for some, it’s just a throw-away phrase, something that seems agreeable and supportive to say to fill in an otherwise blank conversational space. I wonder if there are people who actually give it serious thought and actually believe that anything really is possible? Maybe. Some people are just unconnected to reality. How many people have been injured or killed jumping off high places because they genuinely thought they could fly...maybe, if only they believed it hard enough? Besides the ones under the influence of drugs, I mean.

Imagine: You’re standing on the ground beside a twenty-story building. Is it possible for you to jump hard enough to land on the rood of that building? The question is not whether it’s possible to get to the roof. Not whether it’s possible to devise or use some sort of device like giant springs, or maybe a jet pack, to get you there. The question is whether it is possible for you to stand on the ground and jump hard enough, using only the power of your body, to get to the roof. What about people who would say that’s very unlikely...leaving some shred of doubt, however small it may be, that you could make that jump?

There are many things that are flatly impossible. Not things whose possibility is remote...things that are impossible. There are people who will argue that there is nothing that is really impossible. Why? There are people who genuinely, and with all seriousness, do not believe that the earth is round, rather than flat. Why? Does the sincerity of their belief give the belief any more credibility...any more chance that they might be right? How would YOU refer to such a person? Just mistaken? Deluded? I don’t know what label, if any, the mental health professionals might attach to such a person. I do know, no matter whether they have any sort of official label or not, if they believe things like that they are not perceiving or interpreting reality as it is. Don’t you?

It’s much harder to say that “impossible" would apply to human behaviors that would not violate the laws of physics. Is it impossible that I could marry Valerie Bertinelli and we could live on the moon? No. There is no violation of the laws of physics in that. The likelihood or probability of that happening is vanishingly remote...but not impossible. If there were sufficient motivation for enough people for this to happen, it could be made to happen. Motivation is not relevant to the jumping to the roof.

TRB