It Matters: Breaking the Status Quo

"Go above and beyond."

" Be the change you want to see." 

"Don't let good be good enough"

     "Stand for what you believe in"

"Achieve the unachievable."

Sound familiar? Those are some of the most famous words any parent or educator says to young children. They instill this image in their minds, in my mind, that we can achieve anything we want if we just put our minds to it. Assuming my parents and teachers were right I tried to fly by jumping off a chair, but gravity once again won the battle and the cold hard ground broke my fall. Maybe, it was my young 5 year old mind that didn't understand, or maybe it was just because I couldn't fly at all, no matter how hard I tried.  

 "I can't achieve the unachievable, " I said to myself, "I can't fly on my own. I just can't." 

Can't. Can't. Can't. If I have learned one thing over my whole life it would be that the word can't isn't good for anyone. This word, which I used for many  years following my attempt to fly, is a word I like to call a boundary word. The moment you say the word can't, you draw a line for yourself. This line blocks you from continuing forward. This line is a line that you won't cross. 

If I must admit, I have drawn plenty of those lines for myself throughout my whole entire life. It wasn't until recently that I've consciously noticed these lines in my path. But why now? Why have I just started to realize that I have so many lines I have not crossed yet? If not why, then what? What brought this to my conscious attention? 

It was Martin Luther King Jr. It was the letter he wrote to Birmingham. It was when he said, "Perhaps I was too optimistic; Perhaps I expected too much." 

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I interpreted my parents in the wrong way. I expected that if I wanted to fly, I could fly. But no, I can not fly, at least not on my own. I am a human being. I was not made to fly. But maybe I expected that if I couldn't fly by myself that everything everyone told me was wrong. But in reality, I was wrong. I expected too much. I can fly. I really can. 

He can fly too.

And so can he.

And so can he.

So why can't I?

What these men are doing and what Matin Luther King Jr. has taught me and all my classmates, is that breaking the status quo, breaking this image of flying and transforming it into something else, can get you so much farther than you ever thought possible. In a little article I read about changing the status quo, this man, Stan Lewis, explains the limitations the word can't puts on achieving things in life. 

" I can't do it. As long as you say that, you will always be correct, that is until you embrace change. Change will affect our Thinking as our minds are open to new opportunities around us. As our minds open up, new thought processes begin in our minds. Things we would have never imagined start to enter into our heads. These new thoughts produce new opportunities."

So it matters. Breaking the status quo really matters. And because of it, I will be able to fly one day. Because of the status quo, I will be able to some day break it and change my life forever.