“Can’t”
Daily Meditation #187–8/28/2022
There truly are a great many things we logistically cannot achieve.
Physically lifting mountains.
Traveling at the speed of light.
Convincing toddlers that bedtime is, in fact, bedtime and not the sudden time to be stricken with unbearable thirst.
In school, they bludgeoned our curiosity to death.
They robbed us of our majestic and fantastic imaginations with rote lectures.
We were trained “You can’t do that,” and “You must do this.”
This instilled in us a sense of “realisticness.”
Which, for the most part, is good.
It keeps us from thinking we can jump off of roofs without breaking something.
But it slops and spills all over our heart. It crushes our wings into crumpled, pathetic limbs.
It is just like a bird born and living in a cage — it has no idea it can fly because it never has.
We need to alter our choices of words and behaviors to align better with Eudaimonia.
Instead of saying “I can’t achieve XYZ” or “I cannot do ABC,” we must ask ourselves:
“What perception do I need to change? What attitude must I have to succeed? What behaviors will I need to adopt?”
Instead of defeating oneself before we even try, we must look inward at conquering our own minds.
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These are distillations from my coming book “YouDaimonia: the Ancient Philosophy of Human Flourishing.”
