Accepting our Limitations

I met a woman the other night who admired my wire crochet necklace and when I told her it was quite easy to make, she didn't believe me. She told me she loved the idea of beading but thought she had to "accept her limitations", in that she didn't think she'd ever be able to do it herself. I found that statement to be rather sad.

For one thing, there are many aspects of beading that are so easy to do. The end result can be absolutely beautiful with very little effort. But she sounded like she had already made up her mind that that door was already closed to her, so she wasn't even going to bother knocking on it.

I realize that we all have things that limit us, whether it's time or money or the fact that there is only one George Clooney and chances are, he's not going to be knocking on my door any time soon (although a girl can still dream), but I think if you have the mind set that you can't do something, then you can't. At the very least, you certainly won't enjoy the process of learning to do it.

I was in a class a few months ago and sat beside a woman who got so frustrated when she couldn't catch on to the technique in the first five minutes of the class that she ended up in tears and left, never to return. I felt so bad for her, that her belief in her own abilities was so low that she felt she would never be able to do what the instructor was showing us.

There usually aren't enough hours in the day to do everything you might want to do, although somehow everything that has to get done, does. If we're lucky, there is a tomorrow and the day after that to squeeze it in. Most of us aren't going to win the lottery so there might never be an unlimited excess of funds to do whatever we want, but if we're lucky, there is enough to pay the bills and feed ourselves and hopefully a little left over to do the things we want to do - we might have to work a little longer or harder to save up for them, but hopefully that makes it all the more enjoyable. Perhaps I'll never date George Clooney but I do continue to hold out hope that someday, I might meet some other incredibly fun, talented, smart, funny man who thinks I'm the bees' knees and we will fall madly in love with each other.

In the meantime, I believe we have to keep our minds and our hearts open to the possibilities and accept that the only real limitations we face are those we impose on ourselves.