By what age do we stop believing in six impossible things before breakfast?

I’m not sure, but I do know that too many of us have not only stopped believing in, and reaching for, impossible things. We also give up on “wildly improbable,” and worse yet, “possible, but with a lot of determination and perseverance.”

The wonder in the little girl’s eyes is because she knows what is happening to her is impossible. But it’s happening. Tea for Two, art print from Steve Henderson Collections.

I thought of this when a friend told me about her recent experience changing the  number of her landline phone to her cell. The first person she went to, her go-to tech friend, said that it was impossible.

“But I know of two people who said they did it,” my friend objected.

“I’ve never heard of it. It’s highly unlikely.”

Sound familiar? Statements like these are the reason people tend to keep to themselves their private dreams, their outlandish goals, their secret hopes (which go far beyond, I hope, transferring their phone numbers).

When they do, they hear:

“I’ve never heard of that happening, ever.”

and

“It’s not logical (reasonable, probable, likely).”

Oh, and this one,

“EVERYONE would like something like this. What makes you think you can get it? Are you so very special?”

The artwork, Tea for Two, encourages us to keep the child in us alive, the little person who — despite what all the grownups say — believes that the most wildly improbable things can, and do, happen. Not yet school age, she hasn’t begun the inoculation into “thinking like a scientist,” — only believing what she sees, hears, and touches. (Incidentally, given the technology of what can be done with visual and voice manipulation, it might be wise to question more of the things we see and hear.)

She just knows what she would like, and wonders if there’s a way that it could happen.

(By the way, my friend got her number changed over. It took time, persistence, patience, determination, and the insistent belief that there was no reason it couldn’t be done.)

Thank you for joining me at This Woman Writes. Posts complementing this one are

Think Like a Child

Children Have Something to Teach Adults

The Grown-up World of Make Believe