Impossible

“Most look up and admire the stars. A champion climbs a mountain and grabs one.”
-HJB
Impossible. This word is found in everybody’s vocabulary. All of us at one point or another have said “I can’t do this” or “I could never do that.” We dream about changing the world but tell ourselves that it is impossible. We spend our lives wishing that we could do something significant but are too scared to try. We are afraid of failure, ridicule, and what others think. But why? Why should we care about what someone thinks? Why is it that we are so afraid of doing what no else has done?
We get only one shot at life, so why not give it our best? When we die we are not going to care about what others thought. When we look back at our lives are we going to feel regret for all the things we could have done but didn’t, or are we going to look back and know that we gave it our best shot? Within each and every one of us lies the potential to change the world, to go where no one else has ever been, but only a few actually do it. We hear the stories of the great heroes like Daniel, David, Paul, Joan of Arc, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln, but we don’t realize that with God’s help we could become the next great hero that will go down in history. These heroes were just ordinary people who decided to take that first step into the unknown, and as a result, changed the world. Here is a list of ordinary heroes:
Benjamin Franklin- one child out of seventeen, educated himself, wrote under a false name and was beaten by his father when he confessed. He also ran out of money. Franklin kept on trying. Thanks to him we have one of the greatest inventions ever created, electricity.
Abraham Lincoln- his parents died when he was young, had four kids (three of which died young), ran for senator and lost, and got assassinated. However, Lincoln did not know how to give up. Thanks to him we are still the United States of America and slavery is abolished.
Albert Einstein- as a child he was not considered to be intelligent and as a result was asked to leave school (because he was a negative influence on others), was not granted admission to the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (because he failed the botany, zoology, and languages exams), and was divorced. Thankfully Einstein did not listen to what others told him; at the age of twelve he read a geometry book from cover to cover. He became the greatest scientist of the twentieth century.
Nobody can ruin your future except for yourself. In this life you have two choices, you can either face life already defeated, or you can face life as an obstacle waiting to be overcome, a challenge made just for you. If you think you are a nobody, then you will be a nobody, but if you think that you are a champion, then you will be a champion. We have more advantages today than these heroes of old, so what’s stopping you from being the next person to do the impossible and adding your name and story in the gallery of those who laughed at the word “impossible” and proved it too.
-Ivanna Johnson