Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reminds us, “If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.”
We must not let such positive, proactive demands become cliches where we just hear them, understand them, but become indifferent to them as if the message was directed to someone else.
Process. Absorb. Act.
When in doubt to get to the next step, the next level, the next small or big thing, transformation and adaptation to exert whatever you need out of you to finish must be activated or how shall you see yourself upon a climb?
We are magnificently made, components of our very makeup still inexplicable within their minuscule existence, but complex functions. This should suggest that while we think one way seemingly is not working, there is yet another solution, perhaps countless ways to get to the finish line.
We just have to tap in to the belief and stick with the determination to keep on keeping on.
Anyone who tells you that you can’t or casts doubt upon your steps, you should ask yourself if they have ever finished anything as big as your dreams and is or was ever willing to work as hard as you have worked and hoped to get to your envisioned destiny.
If not, perhaps they cannot see you finish because they put themselves in your shoes and think how impossible it would ever be to achieve such aspirations as you proclaim.
How can you ask one to believe in you who would have a hard time believing in themselves to achieving the same that you are pushing toward?
Sometimes, sometimes- perhaps, at times, many times, you will see something ahead that others can’t even fathom.
To envision what you imagine may seem so absurd to others that consequently, to your own silence, you start to think you may actually be reaching for something unreachable.
And then, there, with that thought, you must stop. Not your dreams or aspirations. Stop those doubts that just attempted to get planted in your heart, mind, body, and spirit.
Think a moment of all legendary stories that have become. Think deeper had they not.
You will be one or the other.
The moment you believe you can’t, that you weren’t made for what you first so incredibly believed you could, your endless possibility just got smaller, your potential to finish, farther from reach. Eventually, your possibilities only have one or two options.
You become like the rest who can only wish they hadn’t stopped dreaming and doing. Or, you get there, wherever that may be, how little or how big, but indeed- you finished with the earned moment to get to look back and say, “I did that.”
Don’t let someone else’s doubts be your own.
Their lack in belief may not be in you, but sadly, it is their lack in belief that what you seek to do would ever come to fruition.
Just because they can’t see what you can see, that doesn’t mean the very thing you envision ceases to exist.
Just because others can’t understand what you speak of, that doesn’t mean in you, within you, whatever it is you comprehend, all of a sudden should disorient you.
There will be those in the end who will have only desired to believe what you saw and heard.
For when you finish, you will have proven the possibility.
And, even if you don’t finish to your fullest satisfaction (to be insatiable perhaps is just a drive to want more), you will have sown the seed for many others to reap the harvest of your hard works.
We may not all get to be in the glory of our own sowing, but what better way to leave the world than to know you planted something worthy of being sowed.
Whether it be your actual belief, doing, or, achieving- someone saw you; someone heard you.
Regardless of the level you worked to attain, your goodness fulfilled its purpose.
Those who had eyes saw. Those who had ears heard.
That was you who believed. Because of your belief, you gave strength and power for others to do the same.
It can be scary to believe what has yet to happen.
When told you could move a mountain if you full-heartedly believed, is it not in the thought of such being impossible already what holds us all back from believing we actually can?
Is it not in the fear of arriving at yet another disappoint should you really feel that you whole-heartedly believed and still, what you sought to achieve did not come to be?
Contrarily, could what be even more real now, is, staying in that fear and never getting anywhere, cowering to the state of that mind, heart, body, and spirit still years from now or even to your last days?
What power or prophecy does anyone withhold of you where they get to determine your purpose?
You may get to the last of your breath trying, but at least you’ll leave this world closest to your sought out destiny, not where someone would remark you gave up at your first few tries, just steps away from where you started.
The worst of all in giving up is, even if no one saw or heard, you did.
Recently, I was put in my place by my youngest child. Driving home alone together he mentioned that he could actually be making over ninety dollars (I believe he had the exact number of $93, but I can’t be exact in recalling) in chores per month.
Without much time to pause, I responded to remind him that the most he could probably make would be around $30.
Frankly, but with utmost respect, he quietly pointed out (under his breath) that it wasn’t that he couldn’t make the amount he said, but that I was only willing to pay him up to $30.
I was caught in the truth.
He was absolutely right.
Trying to teach our children to buy their own candy or wanted items, we create opportunities for them to make money by completing chores.
However, do I want to pay this youngest child of mine almost a hundred dollars a month?
Our dear son already answered that for me as if he was quite frankly, prophetically (or, is this, pathetically) speaking on my behalf.
With utmost (half) comedic, (half) serious tone, I textually exclaim, “Darn the educated mind who come to realize they have been limited!”
I readjusted my “ceiling” attitude and suggested to our youngest son that if he thinks he can, then he will just have to make sure that he undoubtedly earns every dollar.
Just as soon as we were in the house, I saw that youngest boy of ours rush down with the laundry basket along with his list of chores before he went to clean up the family room and then, the coat closet.
He keeps this up, he will prove himself to be right and I, knowingly having believed he was (but just hadn’t hoped he’d go to that extent), will have to cough up my (a test of will or will not) money.
Even if he doesn’t get to, let’s say, $93, as I recalled him stating, even $53 would be hard to cough up would he get to that amount.
Still, I would respectfully give him what he will have earned. His finish will show to reap a reward.
The thought of not finishing is not a question I hope or attempt to ever plant in my children. When asked of yourself to do something, consider it done. This way, the journey is focused on the matter at will, not will not.
The heart, the mind, the body, and the spirit, must be fixated on the target. Fall short and you will still be closer to the target than not having aimed to shoot at all.
There can be no arrow toward the bullseye if never released from the bow.
Easier said than done, but we all learn that movement takes place with some force of action.
All things idle. Only things with exerted force moves or changes its course. Inertia.
I used to give our oldest children allowance without being exact on what chores they had to do. In fairness, they were top of their classes all the way to graduation.
I quietly weened from giving them their “passive” income upon starting to see clothes I had bought on sale being donated even with tags still on or foods uneaten because of no want or desire, not need.
Out of loving habit to give without one having earned leads to the detriment in preparing them for their own world of earning to create paths of their own desires.
Having learned since to do better in my parenting, I am now more definite in what needs to get done and for how much.
There are still things our children do, like carry groceries or clean up their rooms as a thanks for the privileges they receive under our home and guidance, but to see them cherish what they have bought from their own earnings creates that genuine joy I know too well they feel inside each time.
Giving someone a reward without a true finish has only taught me as a parent that a child will never know what a true finish is.
When faced with adversity, all of a sudden the burdens can feel as if our wings have been clipped.
Still, we forget we can run, walk, crawl to our destiny. We must remember this.
You were made to finish is something you have to tell yourself.
Tough times and challenges are not given to the weak, but for those meant to overcome them.
Emigrating here to America to speaking at my high school commencement, to graduating from college, to being certified to teach, to becoming a mother of five, to share moments with the same man whom I’ve been married to for now, over thirty years- there have been quite a number of whispers to my heart, mind, body, and spirit of doubts to finish.
My finishes may be small or insignificant to some or, to many. That’s okay. Someone who doubted saw and heard.
The whispers will keep coming as long as there are un-believers casting their perceived to be power of doubt.
Funny thing is, the more finish lines you push through, the more you prove doubters what they had only hoped to prove you.
While you owe no one any of you to prove, work so hard in your victories, one fly, run, walk, or crawl at a time that messengers begin to show tiredness of trying to convince you to go no further on what you believe you are able to do.
Your resume of accomplishments will continue to grow. Fly, run, walk, crawl. We get to that finish line to say, “What next?”
There are more finishes on the way. You were made to believe.
